Jedikiah and the Stern Reprimand
by Kepouros
Summary: Upon the Founder's orders, Jedikiah Price takes on a personal secretary. She's efficient, composed, and definitely more than what meets the eye. Jedikiah enjoys ruffling her feathers, and when her secret breaks... well. With the aid of blackmail, he enjoys ruffling more than her feathers. (AKA, I have a shameless crush on JP and this fandom needs more smut) JPxOC Rating change to M
1. Chapter 1

Jedikiah Price was a diligent man. Tenacious, precocious... an observant and introspective few would even call him passionate (much in the same way Judas Iscariot was passionate). His cool demeanor rarely showed it, though. An indolent slant of his eyes and a thrumming, bassy voice did little to give away the conviction settled in his bones; the pleasure he took in his work. Most would call him cold. Unfeeling. Robotic with a cruel streak and a whippish mind.

In previous times and careers, he'd been accused of being all of these things to a fault. He took them all as compliment.

Now, though, Jedikiah had found his niche, his calling. With a titan's grip on the reins of a powerful organization systematically shutting down a threatening species, diligence and its associates only paid him, and well.

Though he did not know it, over the next few months, he was about to find out just how well.

The building was bustling in the pre-lunch activity: secretaries, researchers, agents, and trainers all doing their jobs to save the Homo Sapiens race. The fact that there were some Homo Superiors interspersed with them was inconsequential. The freaks of nature (Jedikiah loathed to attribute superiority to their species in any way, including their name, unless absolutely necessary) were firmly leashed. Death and decommission loomed over each and every one, maintaining the mutants' rightful place under his thumb.

He'd rather have them under his expensive heel, but they served as a means to an end.

Jedikiah sat at his desk and tapped on a laser-projection keyboard synced to his tablet, summarizing the report of the decommission of an agent's powers due to a stunning mission failure. He was just getting ready to detail the exact amount of time he'd convulsed against the restraints when a soft knock sounded on the open door of his office.

The blonde man looked up. He wasn't expecting anyone. Those who came to his door regularly were invited, or, in the case of his nephew, not. He certainly wasn't expecting _this._

A white dress blouse with a simple temporary clearance badge on the lapel, a knee-length gray pencil skirt, and hair the color of milk chocolate done up with a pair of short black sticks greeted him. Shapely calves clad in modest hose led to shiny black high heels. Hardly the typical dress of an agent under his command. Come to think of it, he didn't recognize her.

Eyes the color of sea glass queried gently behind studious glasses. "Mr. Price?"

"Can I help you?" he asked shortly, though with just enough politeness to soften the edge of begrudged interruption.

"I'm Laura," she said, taking a light yet empowered step into the office. "Laura Stern?"

Jedikiah blinked at her, letting the heavy pause convey his apathy. "Still drawing a blank."

She gave the tiniest swallow of discomfort, easily masked by a straightening of her glasses. "I'm on loan from the Raleigh office. I thought my visit was heralded by the Director some months ago."

The blonde man blinked again, this time in mild surprise that he'd forgotten, and concern for the stunning lack of details he was able to wring out of his memory. "Just a moment," he said, buying himself time to look over his minutes from the previous few months' board meetings. Surely, the answers he sought but declined to ask rested there: rapt attention during meetings was something of a personal super power. When the man conducting the meetings was a telepath, it was one hell of a spur.

As he tabbed through the documents composed in his own shorthand, the woman took another step into the office, closing the distance between them to one of a single stride. He did not deign to look up, even as the barest hint of some floral scent wafted over him. Without conscious ascent, he gave a quiet, deeper inhale. Effeminate roses. Exotic jasmine. Authoritative sandalwood. The _real_ smells, not a chemist's handiwork.

As he riffled and scanned, she did not shift on her four inch heels. Her hands did not leave the relaxed clasp on the thin briefcase in front of her. In fact, stillness overtook her so completely that even Jedikiah, who worked with people trained in sniper warfare, was mildly impressed. He fought the urge to look up and see if she was still breathing.

It was the power of her gaze that made him purposefully slow down in retribution. Though he knew she wasn't staring at _him, _the weight of it pressed on the very air of the room. He was not a man to be rushed, and the regression of the thickened air signaled he won the tacit battle by attrition.

"Laura Stern," he said finally, a note of downplayed triumph in his tone. Further reading made his brow knit in bemusement. "The Director indicates here that, due to increased traffic in current mutant communities and a sharp rise in breakouts, I am to - " His knitted brow was liberated to his hairline. " - take on a personal secretary?" The ascension of his voice in disbelief broke her statuary impression.

Reaching into her briefcase and pulling out a tablet of her own, she swiped around as she said, "Yes, I have my resume, commendations, and accolades here for your perusal." She closed that final step, completing the conquering, and with a deft flick sent the documents careening through cyberspace to pop up on his own tablet, covering the unfinished report. With a rustle, a paper on the official letterhead of Employee Resources was slid across the desk, verifying she'd passed screening.

Jedikiah regarded her with thinly masked wariness. He didn't like having things sprung on him, but he could hardly fault the woman whose slim wrists belied steady and proficient fingers. He did as bade, though, and perused.

Slowly, his brows lowered and his eyes widened imperceptibly. Resume? He'd seen less thorough IRS audits. Commendations? The names listed went in ascending order, from the Director himself all the way down to the individual regional supervisors'. This woman had been all over the country, serving as the spine of several protocol books, the mastermind of more than one database overhaul, and the merciless cutthroat of inadequacy.

The accolades were imbedded audio files, a common veracity measure in Ultra. They took up over half the file space.

The most delicate throat-clearing Jedikiah had ever heard caused him to look up. "I understand if this is somewhat unexpected," began the woman, no hint of judgment or condescension in her voice. "Though I come recommended, the final approval for my position is up to you. If you would like to have more time to consider, I can come back tomorrow."

There was a thread of strength in her tone that suggested she did not extend this courtesy to many. It was implied by the slight tip of her mouth that doing so would paint him a fool in her eyes. She knew exactly what she was, who she was, and what she wanted to do.

Jedikiah made a show of sitting back in his Herman Miller Embody chair. Tenacity of decision making was called for. "That is unnecessary," he replied. "You can start today." Rising to his full and considerable height, he extended his hand to the woman with a judicious smile and a rigid spine. "Welcome to Ultra, Miss Stern."

As he'd desired, she had to bend slightly over the wide desk to accept the hand and pump it with adequate authority. "Just Stern, please, Mr. Price." There was a dancing in her jasper eyes that hid a private joke.

"Stern, then."

* * *

Stern decided upon the leather sofa as her perch with a certain contrived dignity. She'd clearly been expecting a desk of her own. Jedikiah jotted a quick memo to himself (because, clearly, his mind was failing him early) to requisition one from storage and have it assembled.

It was commonplace to have secretaries' work stations near those of their charges. He was going to have to consider where he'd prefer her to be. Just outside his office was a hallway that wouldn't work, at the end of which was a bullpen of other employee's desks. Somehow, he couldn't see her enjoying it there. But what did he care?

Stern was his _personal _secretary. That implied a fever pitch of intimacy that, frankly, rankled him. He wished he'd had more time to prepare himself for this neat little takeover.

But... Director's orders. He'd handle it like any other.

Jedikiah handed the report off to Stern to finish, almost tossed it with the level of affected casualness. "You've handled decommission reports before, correct?"

As she withdrew and arranged some office necessities from her briefcase and lay them on the low table before the couch, Stern had the good sense to fix her withering gaze on the carpet, just for a second, before replying, "Yes, I have."

He quirked an unseen smile at her bristle. "Our office does one thing different in compiling the different accounts. We add the medical profile of the actual decommission process. Heartrate, blood sugar before and after, and such. It keeps insurance low."

She'd pulled out a larger, working tablet, crossing her legs primly to balance the device across them. "Consider it done."

The degree to which he _liked _that attitude made him momentarily pause.

Settling back into his desk, he tried to ignore the invasion of another body in what had thirty minutes previously been his sanctum sanctorum. He started on reconciling the field combat reports with each other, poking holes with abandon for a solid two hours without coming up for air. Against the left wall, fingertips on a plasma screen were so soft and rapid as to be barely noticed, but he did, anyway. He refused to call it soothing: he was still begrudging the whole affair, and damn well would for some indeterminate time.

Again, that unobtrusive throat clearing caught his attention. He finished typing his sentence before answering, "Yes?"

Stern looked positively comfortable, inordinately so for someone in a new environment, sharing space with a new boss. It was almost disconcerting. "I cannot upload the report without a Level 7 security clearance," she said, sounding somewhat sheepish.

Jedikiah could have facepalmed for his shortcomings. Twice in one day, he'd forgotten something critical. "I'll have one printed up by the end of the day," he assured. "Send the report over here, I'll look it over." It was both a test and a goad. Already, prodding at her pride with a stick was becoming an enjoyable hobby.

Despite the short duration of the hesitation, she managed to pack a bundle of tacit insult into it. "Sure thing." A flick later, and it was open on his screen.

Any other man would have jaw-dropped. Any other man would have examined it for iambic pentameter and fell weeping to his knees. As far as reports went, it was perfection. Jedikiah allowed himself a nod, then sent the document on its way to file keeping.

His watch gave a single beep, denoting the hour. In a matter of seconds, the noise outside the office increased, and soon the hallway was fraught with people trailing down to the lunchroom. Jedikiah stood automatically. "I'll show you the cafeteria."

Stern's gave a smile that didn't reach her mouth. It seemed characteristic. "I think all I'll have to do is follow the herd."

Jedikiah actually _did_ smile at that.

"If it's all the same to you, sir," she said, peeking up at him as he rounded the desk. "I would like to stay back a familiarize myself with the command tree of your system."

He found it both nettling and strangely satisfying that her first 'sir' to him was not in recognition of his authority. Nettling in that it wasn't in response to a command. Satisfying in that was in request to enable better performance.

"What you do on your lunch hour is your business," he replied. He halted in front of the low table, reached up to his lapel, and unclipped his clearance. "Here." He tossed the Level 7 card onto the table. "Don't lose it."

Turning the corner out of the office allowed him a brief glimpse of her surprised face. It filled him with a sense of pride usually assigned to putting a bullet in someone's eye.

He should have realized then that rattling Laura Stern's cage would prove to be an enjoyably, inexorably slippery slope.


	2. Chapter 2

**"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."**

**_[From the Preface]_"**  
**― C.S. Lewis, _The Screwtape Letters _**

* * *

"As this arrangement begins to unfold," Stern said, coming to stand beside him at the window. "I would appreciate having some forewarning as to your management style. It will aid me in fulfilling my job to the best of my ability." It was the end of their second day together, and she'd spent it familiarizing herself with the layout of the building, command chain, and technological nuances. She'd performed every task he'd given her, along with a few he hadn't.

Jedikiah's sharp and hooded blue eyes searched the jasper ones of his newest employee, deciding how best to answer. It took him a minute to quantify, during which they stood silhouetted by the setting sun beaming between buildings, their lengthening shadows spilling across the floor. "A perfectionist," he said finally, cold and pristine as a Himalayan mountain craig. "I am one myself, and I expect nothing less from my employees. I expect it at their detriment, hazard, and expense."

Stern nodded slowly, thoughtfully. She turned her gaze to the orange and gold sky. "Would you consider yourself fair?" she continued, neutral as the gray of her button down blouse. Her voice was, perhaps, softened by the intimidation she found in his words.

"Scarcely. Do you think you can handle that?" he challenged.

Her lashes were long enough to shadow her cheeks. "Definitely."

Jedikiah thought she looked like a sword in a forge: tones of gray outfit painted with tones of fire. "Then we'll get along just fine."

The building was starting to empty. Jedikiah was planning on staying late. It seemed she was, too. "What about you?" he asked, putting his hands in his pockets. "What makes Laura Stern tick?"

It was almost poetic, the way the sun slid behind the skyline just as a sly look slid onto her face. Seeing it reflected in the glass made Jedikiah's gut twist with unexpected lust.

* * *

By the time the building began to fill for the next working day, a shiny new Level 7 clearance badge was handed off to Jedikiah just after eight. It was, in his humble opinion, late: cardmaking machines be damned. The office gopher was practically quaking by the time Jedikiah had finished reaming him a new ass in a tone bland enough to teethe babies on.

"I want these items," he handed the sweating man a sheet from his memo pad. "Delivered to my office by tomorrow morning. Stern will direct you where to put them." He'd decided to let her choose: it was a plumb of her boldness. Would she nestle into his prickly world without hesitation, with the conversation they had the evening previous? Or would she be spooked or timid enough to set up shop in the bullpen down the hall.

"Where to put what?" asked the woman in question as she reentered the office. Laura Stern took one look at the situation (Jedikiah smirking and towering over the employee, and the employee's subsequent hunching terror), and fixed the blonde man with a glare _just _shy of blatantly disrespectful. The gopher, however, was given a gentle and very real smile, with lips and a hint of a dimple.

Jedikiah felt cheated. "Your desk," he replied. Giving the gopher one last soulless stare, he said, "Go."

The man took off, brushing past Stern in his haste, but directing a subtle glance of gratitude at her as he went.

The woman had the audacity to pin Jedikiah with an arched brow. "You like bullying people?" she asked pleasantly.

Jedikiah strode languidly back to his desk chair, came to rest, and with a smile replied, "Maybe."

Stern cranked the glare up a notch, shook her head, and went back to work, sitting on the farther end of the couch.

Jedikiah slipped the new clearance badge into his pocket without a word.

He left to oversee some agent training sessions, looking to put some performance pressure on the recruits. Through the glass wall of the gym, he could watch them grapple on the mat, lift weights, and hone their preternatural powers.

Jedikiah found gratification in watching their difficult attempts to best their trainers with and without using their powers. He could not deny that he was looking for cracks, or that he enjoyed causing them. But even their nervousness and conscientious blunders didn't lighten the needling prick beneath his ribs. When a blonde trainee teleported herself into a steel barbell rack, he went on his way.

There was not an object small enough to compare to the fuck he did not give about Stern's disapproval. And yet this was the closest he, a grown man, had come to sullen in a long time.

On the way back, he encountered his pouting nephew, who still had earplugs draped around his neck. "Stephen," he greeted, unreasonably pleased to realize someone else's dourness. "How'd the firing range go?"

The dark-browed youth scowled even deeper and growled, "My trainer's a bi- "

"Language," cut in Jedikiah, falling into step next to the teen. "I'll not have a hostile working environment." Unless he caused it, that is.

The teenager sighed. "Well, she is. I hit seven out of ten on my first go, and she still slaughtered me."

"Is seven-out-of-ten the same attitude you apply to your studies?" asked the man archly.

Stephen rolled his eyes. "No..."

"Then practice," urged Jedikiah, putting a hand on Stephen's shoulder. "Walk with me, I want to talk to you about having dinner again with your mom and brother."

The plans were tentatively set by the time they entered his office. Stephen stepped into the room, then abruptly did a double-take at the woman on the couch. "Erm, hello," he stammered.

Stern looked up at him clinically from a comparison of two heavily highlighted papers. "Hello."

Jedikiah rolled his eyes, proving which side of the family Stephen got it from. "Stephen, this is my new secretary, Laura Stern. Stern, this is my nephew, would-be agent Stephen Jameson."

Stern rose gracefully, brushing down her pencil skirt (black today, with silver hair sticks) and extended a hand towards the youth. "A pleasure, Stephen."

Jedikiah watched the exchange with detached interest. He noted the difference in Stern's tone when she addressed Stephen. She sounded like she was calming a scared animal. Clearly, there was experience with teenagers behind it.

Stephen, on the other hand, was practically radiating hormones and stumbling over his words like he was three. Stern navigated the conversation with an ease that saved the young man's pride: asking polite questions about where he went to school, how his training was proceeding.

Finally, Jedikiah put them out of his misery. "Stephen, don't you have hand-to-hand with Simpson?"

"Oh, right," said the youth, sounding disappointed. With a glance at his cell phone for the time, he stiffened. "Gotta go. Nice to meet you, Laura!"

The secretary's eyes widened, and her head dipped in a glower. The boy was already gone, but she planted her hands on her hips and muttered towards the door, "Excuse me?"

Jedikiah hid a chuckle.

The day passed amicably enough. He left periodically to grease certain wheels, and to meet a politician for brunch.

It was when Jedikiah checked his phone's calendar for the time to meet with R&D that his eyes narrowed. The previous meeting's minutes were attached. He hadn't done that himself.

"Stern," he muttered. Yet again, he could not fault her for doing what, though unbidden, was her job. He had given her his security clearance card, after all. Of course she would utilize it to perform her job to the utmost: it was what made her a desirable employee. It had not occurred to him that the repercussions would spill over so rapidly into his linked devices.

He should have expected it. Hell, he should have expected _her_. As he kept reminding himself, she was his personal secretary. The barriers were bound to start tumbling, eventually. With a sigh, he touched the pocket that held Stern's newly minted clearance.

As he approached his office again, he noted animated voices coming from within. After spooking two snickering, leery male trainees away from the door with a growl, Jedikiah strode inside to find Stern standing incredibly close to Stephen, seemingly correcting his Isosceles stance. Their backs were to the door, so Jedikiah leaned against the jamb, crossed one foot jauntily, and waited for them to notice him.

"Engage your core muscles," Stern instructed briskly, tapping Stephen's stomach with - a _ruler?_

The youth nodded eagerly, tightening his grip on Jedikiah's stapler.

"Pull with this hand." Her chin practically rested on his shoulder as she checked the angle and lifted him with a touch of the ruler. "And push with the other," continued Stern.

With the ruler tracing Stephen's arms methodically slow in illustration, Stern's voice dropped into a hypnotically smooth register that seemed designed to break a man of his cognition - and make him enjoy it. "The energy from the bullet - or in your case, tranq - enters through one arm, travels across the chest, and terminates through the other in a cyclic motion. When performed well, it minimizes kickback and allows you to fire rapidly."

Her chest brushed Stephen's back as she balanced the thin wooden instrument over the youth's open elbow. "Don't drop it," she warned, close to his ear.

If Jedikiah had to lick his suddenly dry lips, that was between him and God.

"Fire."

Stephen fired off a staple with perfect posture. Turning with a beaming (and admittedly awed) smile, he noticed Jedikiah propped in the doorframe and promptly froze. "Uncle!" he said, voice squeaking on the uptake.

"Mr. Price," greeted Stern like she'd known he was there all along, which was a distinct possibility, judging by the gleam in her eye. "Your nephew's trainer is concerningly ineffective. She didn't even teach Stephen how to stance properly."

"So I gather," Jedikiah remarked, stepping fully inside. "I'll have a word with the trainer. Thank you for your assistance, Stern." Pegging the lightly sweating young man with a flinty smile, Jedikiah said, "Don't you have homework?"

"Um, yes! I do!" Leaving only a cloud of pheromones to indicate his presence, Stephen scampered. "Thanks, Stern!"

Stern watched him go with a quirk of her mouth. When she caught Jedikiah watching her, she shrugged. "He was... lurking, for lack of a better term. I needed to set a standard." She stooped to pick up the ruler, dragging it through her palm with an air of absent threat. "'Laura' is not an acceptable standard."

"I can understand how, by working for Ultra, you are experienced with firearms," Jedikiah began. "However... did you ever attend Catholic school?"

"No," Stern sighed wistfully. "But I wanted to."

Jedikiah processed this as he fished in his pocket. "Here's your clearance," he said, sliding the card across the desk.

"Thank you," she replied, clipping it to her own lapel. "I was wondering when you'd finally hand it over." She gave him a look over her shoulder as she meandered back to her couch that could have frozen a small mammal in place.

Jedikiah thrilled to the game. "I'd like mine back," he said, signing into his computer to feign disinterest.

Stern, too, signed into her laptop, and did not deign to look at him. "I'm afraid it's in use, and cannot be returned at this time." She made a very convincing show of looking at her ladies' watch. "It should be back in your care in approximately four hours."

Jedikiah tamped down on the twitch in his eye. It was the exact amount of time he'd held onto her card.

Damn, she was a power trip - with emphasis on _trip_ - in T-strap heels.

And damn, if he didn't admire her for it. _Nobody_ had gone toe to toe with him like this since... well, ever.

"Very well," he replied with a glower she didn't acknowledge. He'd pick his battles. As long as the card didn't leave the building, he couldn't phone security that it was stolen. They'd read the tracker imbedded in the card and laugh at him. And he certainly didn't want to explain how his petite secretary was holding it hostage.

Jedikiah tended his cropped up inbox as he tended his warmed blood.

Three o'clock came, and he was momentarily distracted from the machete-worthy weeding of his inbox by the sound of bones creaking. Stern stood up with a stretch, wandered over to the Kuerig and twirled the K-cup carousel thoughtfully. All the supervisors had them in their offices, stocked with their preference. Jedikiah didn't much care, usually taking his coffee at home with the newspaper.

Jedikiah watched surreptitiously, curious to see what she'd pick from the vast array. The office rats had acknowledged his lack of a preference when installing the machine by giving him, essentially, one of everything.

Stern settled on an English Breakfast, stamped it in, and stood over it while it percolated. "My vice," she said, pitched for him to hear.

"Come again?" he asked, sounding bored enough to convince her he wasn't eyeing up her lovely posterior, on display by her heels. How had he not noticed that before? He shook his head.

"Tea. It's my singular vice." As the machine gurgled to a halt, she lifted the steaming cup and went back to her workspace. "I don't drink alcohol, smoke, or engage in recreational drugs. I'm a vegan. Tea is my one and only habit." With a careful sip, she gave an honest exhale. "What about you?"

He paused in mid-signature. The empty gesture of giving him a so-called weakness was a mockery he could not call her on. So instead, he replied, "Coffee in the morning. A stiff brandy, on occasion." Slipping the word 'stiff' into the conversation was an added bonus.

She hummed in pleasant acceptance, and they descended into work again.

Jedikiah watched, peeking from the corners of his eyes, as the brew rendered its magic on the severe Stern. As she steadily moved through the thick paper file on her lap, redacting the virtual copy on her laptop as needed, her spine began to soften, and her muscles slowly uncoiled. The change in her demeanor was palpable, considering she'd been tight with righteous indignation at his card stunt and tense with delight at their game.

Six o'clock came and went with Jedikiah in the trenches of a four-way Skype conference with the leaders of Ultra annexes outside the country. Between the Middle Eastern's thick accent and the Korean's implacability, he was in a foul mood by the time the disconnect screen showed.

The building was empty, eerily so, as the regular employees had gone home to their families. With a tired sigh nobody was allowed to hear, Jedikiah made his way back to his floor, taking the stairs to work off some disgruntlement.

As he rounded the corner into his hall, a piece of plastic wrapping protruding from his door made him frown. A high-pitched whirring sound deepened the creases. It had to be the gopher delivering Stern's office.

Creeping closer and hoping to startle the poor man, he was given a treated sight. The same posterior he'd been eyeing over the Kuerig was now stuck out at an attractive angle from under a half-assembled desk. The desk was _inside _the office.

Jedikiah was only a human man, after all. He propped himself against the hallway wall and observed unabashedly.

That delightful bunch of muscle flexed as Stern grunted delicately, activating the cordless screwdriver again. She'd managed to erect the shell of the desk, and him, while she was at it.

The man clambered out of the gutter with a loud clearing of his throat and explosive knock. The bang of her head on the underside was almost comical. "Having fun?" he asked sardonically. He was a bit edgier than usual after that shitstorm of a teleconference.

She withdrew her head with a wince and a rub, sitting back on her shoeless and hosed heels. "Loads, actually. It's missing eight screws. I can't mount the cabinets without them."

Feeling his oats, Jedikiah crouched next to her, looking into the footwell of the desk. DIY projects tended to energize him, but there was no need to advertise that. "What are those, three-eighths?" he asked casually, almost to himself.

"Three-sixteenths, actually," Stern replied, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She dragged a half-complete drawer closer and threaded a screw through the handle, studiously not facing him.

He recognized a defense when he saw one, and with a bitten back grin, he realized it was due to his proximity. "Can I have my card back now?" he asked, though it was in no way a question.

Stern pinked slightly, but found the brazenness to look at him. "Trade you some screws."

'Trade' and 'screw' in the same sentence didn't help his self-control. "It's hardly a trade," he pointed out. "You're going to give it back, anyway."

She ticked an eyebrow and leveled a devilish smile on him, so different than the previous two he'd witnessed, and did not reply.

Jedikiah stood, spun on his heel, and stalked off before he did something rash. The whir of the screwdriver started up again before he was out of earshot. He located the nearest janitor's closet and fished around until he found a hefty toolbox, then hauled it back to the room.

"It won't fit through the door," he commented offhandedly. "The desk."

Stern looked up at him, startled by his sudden presence enough to show a blink's breadth of insecurity. "Is that a problem?"

He gave her his best lion's eyes. "Not at all."

* * *

Jedikiah held the drawer array in place as Stern screwed them in, clearly at ease with the task, though it put her completely curled up in the footwell. "I had to assemble all my furniture," she said, by way of an explanation.

"I do a little carpentry," he admitted. Then, raising the stakes, he elaborated, "Mostly birdhouses."

There was a barely quelled snort of laughter, the evidence of which was gone by the time she ducked free to look at him. "Birdhouses," she deadpanned. With an air of disbelief, she went back to screwing. "I would have guessed bookshelves."

Jedikiah genuinely scowled. "Bookshelves are a pain. Birds don't care if everything is perfectly level."

He might have been mistaken, but he thought he caught another, gentler snort. "Indeed." Stern scooted out from under the desk, finally giving Jedikiah a feel for her height without heels. She came barely to his chin.

Dragging her completed office chair into place, she sat down, propped her heels on the desk, and crossed them. Without a word, she slipped two fingers between her blouse buttons, withdrew his security clearance card, and handed it to him.

Jedikiah took it back, and let his fingers touch hers with intentional firmness.


	3. Chapter 3

They were at the end of a weekly debriefing (check-in, threat-renewal, whip-cracking), sitting across Jedikiah's desk. Even though Jedikiah had the chair of power behind the desk, somehow, the authority it subtly granted him was dwarfed and mocked by the grey-suited man on the other side.

"If I may ask," Jedikiah said, with the clear indication that very well would, fuck you very much. "Why would you saddle me with a secretary?"

The Founder cocked his head, forming his beard around a smile. "Is it really your place to question my motives?" queried the Essex accent serenely.

"Call it an affront to my competency," Jedikiah remanded, not dissuaded.

The prying eyes landed on him, power pooling in their dark depths. "Believe me, Mr. Price," he hummed. "If I were dissatisfied by your work, you would have no doubts."

A very mild shiver made Jedikiah's scalp crawl. Rather than press his luck, he gambled on silence.

"The organization is picking up pace," the Founder said finally, dismissively. "I simply thought you could use a hand. The best hand in Ultra. A hand personally vouched for by _me_." The man paused to change his crossed legs, the palpable bear of his gaze remaining on the blonde man. "Do you find Laura Stern to be inadequate?" he asked benignly.

Jedikiah could roll the dice and say yes, she wasn't up to snuff. But that lie might land him in trouble if the psychic occupying one of the lean metal chairs before his desk put his significant power to work verifying the statement. And even if Jedikiah wasn't found to be a liar, he might simple be throwing away a lesser of two evils: the Founder might simply give him another, less capable secretary. Frankly, he already had Stern trained. It was easier to just keep her.

"No," Jedikiah said evenly. "She's the best, like you said."

The Founder smiled. "Indeed." After a moment's pause, a genuine tone of humor colored his voice. "Have you gotten her to make coffee yet?"

Jedikiah hid his momentary confusion well. "No."

The smile turned secretive. "Maybe _you _will. She declined to do so for me even once during the four months she worked in my office."

"Why?" Jedikiah asked, bemused.

The Founder made a motion with his hand that was part dismissive, part knowing. "When I read her mind during the interview process, I could only see that she would not, but not the reason. I got the distinct impression that it was significant to her, somehow."

Now Jedikiah was befuddled on two fronts, now: why the Founder would indulge in such idle gossip, and why Stern had such a loathing for coffee. The Founder bid him a mildly threatening goodbye, and strode from the room, leaving Jedikiah to puzzle.

* * *

Jedikiah was under no illusions: Stern hated his guts. He was ruthless, gave her far too much work, far too little credit, and zero thanks.

He hated Stern's guts. She was pretty (like a decorative sheath on a knife), far too intelligent (she _handled_ him, and it was usually days later he figured it out, if at all), and keenly sarcastic ("Making your coffee is not in my job description."). She was with him without his consent, but his hands were tied by the Essex bastard.

But somehow, a kind of uneasy respect grew up like new spring grass. Jedikiah found her personality as unyielding as her name, and in knowing as much, he found a bizarre, backwards sort of comfort.

There were times when Stern initiated hostility, and after a few instances, Jedikiah discovered its purpose.

It was an hour after Jedikiah's kidnapping by John's hands came to a close. He walked into the office on the phone with the field team, who were trying to find the Tomorrow People's hideout according to the memories gleaned from Jedikiah's mind.

He hated having his mind scanned. Detested it with all his being. Jedikiah was angry, tired, and hungry.

The first thing out of Stern's matte burgundy lips was, "Apple called. They want your iPhone 3 for the museum. Does it come with or without the abacus?"

When he had to roll heads, shoot things, scold his errant nephew, and generally pretend he gave a shit about anything but humans, it would happen. As soon as Jedikiah flopped into his office chair, he would receive an uber-polite quasi-insult from Stern.

His response to these comments was always a sneer, but it gave him redirection for his anger.

* * *

Sitting on a new breakout's house and waiting for the young man to show his face was textbook. Jedikiah had written himself into the mission with the express purpose of getting out of the office. He'd left all his paperwork and calls to Stern.

He was looking forward to this. There was no potential in this breakout as an agent, no one else in the house, and no reason to hold back. Jedikiah was relishing the opportunity to put down a threat to the human race. With extreme prejudice.

Being cramped up in a surveillance vehicle disguised as a cable company van with three agents, two of them Tomorrow People, had not been Jedikiah's expectation. But the telepaths confirmed what the infrared camera said with each sweep: the young man was inside.

"We've got dampers on the whole place," the senior agent said, cocking his pistol. "Let's go get him." Jedikiah had agreed.

The simple extermination mission had gone to shit.

Next thing Jedikiah knew, the senior agent was writhing on the ground with a face full of salt shot. The breakout had found his ideal home defense gun. Unlike the Ultra agents' pistols and tranqs, this gun did not have a silencer. A firefight ensued.

At some point, Jedikiah was shoved down a flight of stairs. It was a mercifully short flight, but he bumped his head enough to see stars.

The neighbors called the police, and the officers screeched up just as the breakout fired his last round. Before the cops broke down the door, Jedikiah managed to put a bullet in the breakout's brain. They teleported out in time.

Medical, combat, and termination reports all had to be written, checked, and filed. However, the medical ward had swallowed him whole and refused to spit him out again without eight stitches in the back of his head.

When Jedikiah finally flopped down into his office chair with blood under his fingernails, his hair and suit a mess, and a literal fuckton of paperwork, Stern was there to greet him.

"I've never seen yellow gold cuff links with a white gold tie clip," she commented benignly. "Is that a trend?"

Jedikiah refrained - barely - from swearing or firing her despite the Founder's orders.

"And also, your shoe is untied."

Later that night, as he nursed a brandy and an icepack in the comfort of his own home, he marveled at how she'd taken the sting right out of the botched mission.

* * *

A breakout that had eluded capture in Canada for years jumped the border. They apprehended the man after a few terse hours, and Jedikiah plunged the needle into the man's neck with malicious glee.

The sister office wasn't pleased with that.

"He was ours," snapped the Canadian director in a colonized French accent. His tone bespoke much stronger sentiments barely contained. "He's a Canadian national that happened to drop into your sandbox. You had no right to decommission him."

"I had every right," rejoined Jedikiah with calmness he didn't feel. "He put two of my agents - good agents (he meant_ human_)- in the medical ward." What he wanted to say was, "You're lucky we didn't euthanize him."

After twenty minutes of increasingly hostile arguing, Jedikiah was reaching the end of his patience. Expedition arrangements scarcely got made before the call devolved into thinly guised posturing and pleasant threats.

"I'll see you soon, eh?" rumbled the Canadian.

"Come by my office anytime," Jedikiah fronted sweetly. Putting down the phone with exaggerated care, he gave a low growl that turned into an even lower groan.

"Good times," muttered Stern, posture impeccable from her new desk across the room. The smell of permanent marker permeated the air as she scrubbed some files of pertinent detail. She'd arranged her office-within-an-office perpendicular to his desk, so Jedikiah had a profile of her body and she could view the visitors.

Of all things, she'd opted to give him a profile view of Pilates legs and balconette bra silhouette. Why had he allowed her to set up shop in his office, again? Right. He wanted her close enough to harass.

"The best it ever gets," he replied, scrubbing his face. "When it comes to our sister Ultra."

"May I make a suggestion?" Stern asked, with complete tact.

"By all means," said Jedikiah, too irked to care.

"An expansion of the intranet system of protocol manuals might prove useful in situations such as this." Capping her Sharpie, she sidled closer. "It'd allow our agents to see Canadian protocols alongside ours. The Canadian Ultras interrogate captured Homo Superiors before decommissioning them. That's harder to do without holding their powers as a bargaining chip."

Jedikiah contemplated this over steepled fingers. "They don't honor that kind of bargaining chip. Canada decoms as many as us."

"That's not the point," Stern replied, standing in front of his desk. "You cockblocked them. They're angry because now they can't hunt down his buddies."

Jedikiah had never heard that term used with such flippancy in an office setting, but refused to let his reflexive humor show. Tapping his index fingers together in thought, he asked, "Do you think that this intranet idea would smooth some feathers?"

"It'd show you were willing to oblige them in the future." She quirked her mouth, eyes dancing. "And perhaps installing a hotline."

Jedikiah's stormy face was tempered by the joke. "No thanks," he replied dryly. "I've had enough French accents for a lifetime."

Stern shifted her stack of files to unclip a smartphone from her slender hip. "I'll call his secretary. We're on a first-name basis. She'll breeze it past him, and she and I will set it up." Stern tilted her head at him, almost as an afterthought. "May I take liberties to include access to the new material in the next office-wide tech update?"

Jedikiah waved permission, and found himself mollified by getting to actually grant Stern a request. Doubtless, she could have acceptably taken the liberty without asking. Somehow, she knew that asking him for something reaffirmed his sense of control.

She'd let go of her pride to rescue his. Jedikiah wasn't sure how to take that.

"Cockblocked, huh?" he questioned casually as she walked towards the door. "You know anything about that?"

Stern half-turned to grant him a laugh, his first. It was an unabashed thing that momentarily stunned him in its youthfulness. But she did not respond to his question in words. As she disappeared down the hall, red soles flashing, he heard her voice on the phone, "Hello, Iris! It's Laura. Tell me you heard all that..."

* * *

Not two days later, the Canadian director made a surprise visit.

On his way back upstairs from a late lunch, Jedikiah only heard about it secondhand from a tech guy who'd happened to be installing Stern's Ethernet at the time of the confrontation.

"He sounded like he was jonesin' for a throw-down," commented the techie, who seemed eager to repeat the account, for some reason. "Comin' all the way here, lookin' for you, Mr. Price."

"Where is he now?" Jedikiah asked placidly. A Southern IT guy was almost too much of an oxymoron for Jedikiah to handle, but he clung on.

"Stern's got him touring the mainframe _on her arm_," emphasized the nerd. "And get this: he came in all thunder and flash, but when he walked out with her, he was whistlin' Dixie and smilin' like a jackass chewin' briars."

Although Jedikiah had reached his limit of bumpkin quotes for the day, he dismissed the man with a nod and entered his office. On the screen of Stern's new desktop, the intranet was open and the Canadian protocol manual was up.

Stern reappeared some thirty minutes later, slightly pink in the cheeks. "Sorry about that," she said. "I meant to have that report finished by the time you got back, but I got waylaid."

"So I hear," Jedikiah replied evenly. "And was there any substance to the good man's visit?"

Stern _pssh_ed. "Not a lick. Some thin excuse about settling differences like professionals. According to Iris, he's just on a layover between flights." As Stern's fingertips splayed over her keyboard, she paused, and a concerned wrinkle sprung up between her eyes. "I didn't offend you, did I?" she asked, sounding genuinely worried. "By taking him on?"

Jedikiah couldn't resist letting the silence hang a moment longer than necessary. "No," he finally replied. "What Frenchie and I have to say to each other isn't in the best interests of our continued cooperation. He'll blow over soon enough." At her released breath, he added, "No cockblocking occurred."

Stern swiveled her chair to face him with a humored reproachfulness that made his smirk widen. "You cruel man," she muttered, fighting the twitch of her dimple.

"And Stern?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Don't fight my battles for me." Her only saving grace was that he'd been out of the office at the time. If she'd tried to sweep Canada's leg while he was present, he'd have chewed her up one side and down the other.

"Wouldn't dream of it, sir."

He winked. He did so enjoy pushing her buttons. If he got to see that face, drawn between acquiescence and a glower, he'd be doing it more often.

The next day when he booted up his computer, a tiny calendar counter in the corner of the screen read: _"2" days since the last CB alert._

* * *

The ease with which Jedikiah and Stern conformed to their working relationship both astonished and disturbed Jedikiah. It wasn't because he was trying. In fact, he was deliberately not trying. But despite his slack hand, Stern took every assignment, every task, and turned it into gold.

On occasions when her Midas touch proved too little a reaction for his liking, Jedikiah found it necessary to play hardball. When he clued into her affinity for the Miami Dolphins, he programmed her computer to make a dolphin's cackle with each click.

After ten solid minutes of hiding his smile, she switched to her tablet in stony silence.

The next time he ordered sushi for delivery during a lunchtime teleconference, the wasabi, which he detested, was evenly distributed across each piece. The seal on the container was mysteriously unbroken, and he spent a good portion of time pondering how the hell...?

Jedikiah's shorthand during meetings was legendarily only decipherable by himself or an Ultra cryptologist. To combat Stern's assimilation, he periodically changed some words to Spanish, sat back, and watched the show. By the time Stern figured out she wasn't in the ballpark, she was so cranked up she'd ripped her hairsticks out and was absently, though heartlessly, stabbing the individual pockets out of a piece of bubble wrap.

Somehow, his computer started to announce everything it did in Greek. The Southern IT guy made another appearance. ("What does _malaka _mean, anywho? It's the defaulted username.")

* * *

Over the course of several weeks, Jedikiah watched from afar as she navigated her new world, one ruled by men, like a ship in home waters. Stern learned the names of possibly everybody on this and the immediate two floors. They started to come to her as a sounding board for everything from fraternization policies (which were mercifully loose in Ultra, mostly divided along the lines of species) to formatting aid ("I find Times New Roman a good font for addendums. Serifs make the heart grow fonder.")

Stern rarely loosed a full smile, but somehow, her expression toed the line between detached neutrality and recognition of everyone's equality. The only time the latter slipped out of place was when she had contact with Jedikiah. Then, she seemed to take the utmost care to show cool respect that somehow begrudged him his authority.

He found himself wanting to smash her frosty shell, light her up with emotion, with passion. The only thing she seemed truly passionate about was exacting perfection in her work.

But Stern was also tough, accepting no quarter for inadequacy. Jedikiah heard her side of a dressing-down and was mildly impressed at her spine.

"Agent Lancer," she'd said, like velvet wrapped in steel, instead of the inverse. "Your physical correlation to other agents, as detailed in your mission reports, is sorely lacking in accuracy."

A pause.

"I understand you were teleporting around. I do not, however, see how that affects your capacity to _note where you_ _were_."

Another pause.

"Then I guess you'll have to go back out there and retrace your steps. Also," she crossed her ankles and settled them on her desk, spreading out a handful of papers in scrawled handwriting and bled on by the Highlighter of Doom. "There are serious discrepancies between how many shots you fired, and how many your fellow agents fired. This is true across your last five mission reports."

Yet another pause, wherein she artfully twirled a pen over her knuckles, eyes closed. "Because it's my job to note weaknesses, Agent Lancer. I am signing you in for five hours of firing range time. You must complete it and renew your evaluation grade before I take the hold off your mission readiness." Her voice dropped an octave, though the inflections were sweeter than honey. "If your next report isn't accurate, I will repeat the process. Have a nice day."

Jedikiah had his chin in one hand when she opened her eyes. "I think I understand, now," he commented. "Why you prefer to be called Stern."

She didn't reply save for a faint blush under her foundation and started to type.

Jedikiah surreptitiously readjusted himself in his pants and did the same.

* * *

His was one of roughly ten cars in the parking deck, and he sat in the darkness of the plush interior, waiting. It was an idle curiosity to discover which car she drove. Would it be the red Honda? the silver Impala? the late-model forest Jeep?

She traipsed out roughly five minutes after him, unlocked a peacock teal Prius, and drove off without noticing him.

Jedikiah smiled. A sensible car in a wild, rich color. He wondered if the collision of two ideals also applied to her underwear.

* * *

A month passed, then two.

Jedikiah wasn't sure when he started to notice, really.

Stern came to work in various professional attire. She wore her hair high, heels higher, and the only real variation was in the texture or basic color of her outfits. Always a skirt. Always a pressed blouse. A demure manicure.

The only thing that didn't change was the woman's watch on her right wrist.

Stern only ever fiddled with it when a breakout was dragged, kicking and screaming in repressor cuffs, past the door on the way to the holding cells. As the cries faded with distance, Stern would portray, as kinesic specialists would call it, a self-touch gesture. Her left hand would find the face of the watch, moving over it in a tight circle as though ensuring it was intact.

Jedikiah noticed she did it when Stephen and other agents with powers come into his office, too.

And that piqued his interest, most of all...


	4. Chapter 4

One morning, Jedikiah called Stern and told her to purchase Starbucks for him on the way into the office. He'd run out of grounds that morning. It was then he confirmed that Stern had a serious, deep-seated issue with bringing him coffee, and no issues letting it air. The Founder had not been kidding.

"No," she said over the phone, so frosty Jedikiah expected the device to freeze to his palm.

"Pardon?" he asked, cocking an unseen brow.

"I am not an office gopher," she continued. "I am a professional woman with three degree and years of experience. I do not _fetch_ coffee like a common phone rat."

"It is well within my authority to insist," Jedikiah replied coolly. "In your job description, it clearly says, 'perform other tasks as assigned'."

"The implication, as my paralegal degree would concur, is that those tasks are office-, job-, and work-related," she countered. "I'm sure my union rep would also agree." A horn honked distantly. "Excuse me, before I cause an accident by _talking to you before my workday._"

The line went dead. Jedikiah made certain he was not in the office, or even on the same floor, when she came in. He left an unreasonably tall pile of work on her desk, went to an early lunch. When he returned, he took his time studying the livid hold of her shoulders.

* * *

People began to treat Stern like the oracle priestess to Jedikiah's deity; her mouth, his words. If Jedikiah was out of the office, Stern would pick up his phone in the most impossibly happy voice, "Hello, this is Stern speaking for Mr. Price."

Jedikiah discovered it useful, and allowed it to continue.

Most of the time, she would completely handle the situation on the other end, make a note of it on his pad, and go about her business. One time, however, Stern hunted him down. The result was a downward spiral of epic proportions.

Jedikiah leaned over a struggling woman strapped to a decommission chair. "Alexa... Kirsch, is it?" he began, smooth as silk, flipping through her file.

Alexa was keeping the tightest hold on her mouth as anyone Jedikiah ever seen. He was unimpressed. They all broke down, eventually.

"You have one hell of a record with us, Alexa," he said. "You've snatched several breakouts right out of our field agents' hands. As you can imagine, we hate that." He closed the file with a snap. "Would you care to tell me where your little pack of street rats hides out?"

Alexa was fixated on the ceiling like it was the center of her universe, but still pulling on the leather restraints that dented her skin.

"No?" inferred Jedikiah. "Suit yourself."

He ran his hands over the array of vials on the steel surgical cart next to them, and said, almost conversationally, "Did you know I have a Doctorate in evolutionary biology?"

The woman, who was around thirty with eyes hollowed by hunger, continued to fight the bonds and eye him with renewed hatred and caution.

"As head of this branch of Ultra," he continued, holding one vial up to the light for inspection. "This suits me well, as you can imagine. But I don't do as much of the research as I'd like anymore," he said with a sigh, hefting a needle gun and inserting the vial in the chamber. "Despite this, I try very hard to stay current with my skills."

Lightning fast, he plunged the needle into the woman's arm, not injecting the liquid.

She yelped in shock, but he pinned her further by the shoulder.

"The only difference," he said, head lowering to the woman's ear. "Between the serum that strips you of your powers, and the compound that induces severe nerve pain, is only one digit in the empirical formula. And for the life of me, I can't seem to remember which is which."

The woman's eyes widened, and she started to tremble under his hand.

"So let's play a little game," suggested Jedikiah amicably. "Which do you think is loaded in this needle right now: nerve pain, or power stripper?"

He pulled the trigger, emptying the contents into the woman's bloodstream. It was nerve pain compound, of course: she had information he wanted. But it would take a minute to reach full, howling effect.

A knock came on the cell door. Jedikiah's head snapped up. After a pause, the knock came again. With a scowl, Jedikiah replaced the needle gun on the tray and strode over to yank open the door.

Stern stood at parade rest in the hallway. "Am I interrupting?" she asked, looking coolly past him at the woman, whose body was starting to lock up in pain.

"Yes, actually, Stern," he replied longsufferingly. Over his shoulder, he told the shuddering Alexa, "I have the neutralizer right there, on the tray. When you get sick of it, just scream."

Jedikiah stepped fully into the hall, but left the door ajar to monitor the woman. "What is it, Stern?"

"The mainframe is going down for a temporary fix," she stated. She seemed to be schooling her expression to passivity. Was she disturbed by the little shrieks starting to fight their way past Alexa's clenched jaw? "I've r-rerouted your calls to your cell phone."

Jedikiah tactfully ignored her stutter. He had no time for a lack of gall. "And you felt the need to tell me in person because...?"

"I figured you wouldn't want your phone blowing up with calls while you were... occupied," she explained, wincing at the sounds of Alexa's distress. "I'll take it off your hands for a bit, if you'd like."

Jedikiah opened his mouth to speak, but had no opportunity.

Alexa _screeched_. But the noise was only a prelude to what came next.

A wave of psychic pain echoed what came out of Alexa's mouth, stabbing Jedikiah's brain like a knife cleaving the hemispheres. He staggered under the power of it with a shout of pain. The rebounded anguish of a body made manifest in another's mind threatened to cripple him, clutching his head.

Jedikiah heard Stern scream like a banshee as he thrust back into the room and scrabbled for a new vial and the needle gun. Outside the room, all down the hall, he could hear other people yelling in confusion and pain.

He drew back the plunger and stabbed the liquid home, not caring if the dosage of sedative was accurate. In less than ten seconds of teeth-clenching pain, the sedative started to work. Alexa uncoiled on the table like a deflating balloon, falling into deep unconsciousness.

Jedikiah gasped as the pain abated. He stumbled back into the hallway to find Stern collapsed against the wall with her hands over her ears and tears streaking down her face. She was drawn up into a ball of legs and elbows that imitated a turtle in its shell.

"Stern, look at me!" he commanded, crouching beside the secretary. He peeled her hands off her head and tipped her eyes to the light, checking her pupil dilation. "You're fine, you're okay," he assured: her or himself, he was uncertain.

"What..." she panted, jasper eyes glazed with pain meeting his. "The hell?"

Jedikiah's thumb was over her sharp, wet cheekbone, and he unconsciously swiped at the moisture under the pad, the soft skin just under her eye. The effect was for him to jerk back like he'd been branded. "It happens," Jedikiah summarized with all the levelness he could muster. "Their power can override the suppressor cuffs. I left the door cracked, it's my fault the room dampeners didn't work." He would berate himself later.

He straightened, looking down at his crumpled secretary. It was the most bedraggled he'd ever seen her, and it tugged on some previously unknown thread connecting his coiling gut with his heart. Jedikiah had a brief, intense flash of jerking her into his chest, holding her there despite her protests as he attacked her mouth, bent her over his arm with the force...

Keeping the internal war under careful but thin wraps, he extended his hand to Stern.

Stern's expression was still dazed, but she regarded the hand he offered like an unexpected courtesy. Her eyes glanced up to his, briefly, mouth slightly parted in surprise. Jedikiah hadn't shaken hands with her since starting her employ, and hadn't given even a pretense of courtesy, at all.

Slender fingers wrapped around his, strength and delicacy combined, as he pulled her to her feet. She suddenly stiffened and went spectacularly pale. Jedikiah thought she's stood too fast and was dizzy with bloodrush. Just as he twitched to bracket her bracingly, to prevent her listing over, he noticed what she was staring at.

"No," she whispered, examining the watch on her wrist. "No, no." The watch face was cracked.

"What is it?" Jedikiah asked. He wasn't getting the full picture, here.

She was staring at the small cracked glass with horror. Snapping out of it with a swallow, her gaze flitted up to his before a mask dropped like a steel door. "It's... it's nothing. It's just special to me, that's all."

Jedikiah sighed and let it go. The klaxons shut off in mid-whoop, and the flashing lights retracted into the wall. Shouts and bustling echoed on both ends of the secluded hall. The entire research department and most everyone with a gun were bearing down on them. "Take the rest of the day," he ordered, drawing himself to his full height in preparation for war.

Stern fixed him with a stubborn look that, on her disheveled face, was somewhat foxy. The black run of her mascara down her face turned to warpaint. "Not a chance, sir."

Jedikiah had to flash a smile at her tenacity, looking her over with barely veiled approval. "Then here," he said, handing over his cellphone. "Hold my calls until I get back upstairs."

"You got it," she replied resolutely. As she walked off through the descending crowd, the last vestige of sanity went with her.

* * *

The psychic shockwave seemed concentrated in the immediate area of the holding cell, and trailed off steeply with distance. The least affected had felt little more than a tickle through their psyche.

Jedikiah calmed the gun-toters, placated the researchers, and finished the interrogation. Over the next few days, he would coordinate the hunt for Alexa's street rats. Ultra planned to capture and decommission the six she detailed. Jedikiah had aspirations to talk one, the oldest boy, into joining Ultra to save the lives of the other six. With a few hours of manipulation and the chance to keep his powers, Jedikiah was confident an agent would be born.

Whether or not the young man would make it all the way through the training was up to Jedikiah, of course. But he wouldn't need to detail that.

When Jedikiah emerged from the interrogation room, he found his tie had somehow gotten red drips from his nosebleed on it. A stab of anger filled him, and belatedly, he marveled at how thin his nerves were. The damn freak had caused harm just by existing. Jedikiah would never be satisfied until the world was free of them. He yanked the tie free and trashed it malevolently in the nearest can.

His flagging self-control was further beaten back by the medical team who waylaid him and were too thorough in checking him over. When Jedikiah finally snapped at them and escaped, he knew he was in disarray: his shirt was wrinkled, a button missing. Everyone else affected recovered quickly, and by the time Jedikiah returned to his office, the pain in his head was a dull throb.

Stern greeted him with a sympathetic wince, a cup of Kuerig coffee, and some aspirin. "Trust me, I know."

He swallowed the pills gratefully. Any other day, he would have turned his nose up at the pseudo-brew. This time, he allowed it. "Hazards of the profession, I'm afraid."

She nodded tiredly. She'd obviously washed her face of tear/mascara residue, and it had taken most of her makeup with it. Jedikiah found there wasn't much makeup in the first place, and the bareness of her face interested him, somehow. Like he was seeing her honestly for the first time.

"Did you get checked by medical?" he asked, sipping the cup. It was actually very good, and prepared just how he usually liked it.

Stern's nose wrinkled in distaste. "Yes." Her eyes dipped to his tie-free collar and the exposed skin there. There was a flicker of something hidden by her expression. "I can see we had the same examiners." She indicated the missing button at the top of her shirt, which matched his.

The joining of two collarbones ought not be that tempting, nor a freed and graceful neck, nor the beginnings of smooth mounds... Jedikiah swallowed the mouthful too quickly and choked back a cough. That was one button too few for his tenuous grip on self-control. He forced himself to wander towards his desk, out of her scent cloud of roses, jasmine, and sandalwood. "You can still take the rest of the day," he offered thickly.

Stern smirked at him with narrowed eyes, and the expression made Jedikiah want to groan. It was _not_ the day for him to notice all the sexy little nuances in his secretary. "You'll not be rid of me that easily," she said. Was that a _teasing_ tone? "You'll fault me for it, I'm sure," she finished with a drop of acidity.

"You may be certain," he shot back, imitating the edge to her voice. With focused care, he set down his coffee cup and booted his computer. "Suit yourself."

"The mainframe is still down," she reminded.

Jedikiah rubbed his temples. It was not even lunchtime yet. The blonde man wanted to groan, again. "May as well get the details down while they're fresh," he sighed, pulling out his personal tablet.

He struggled to wrench his concentration onto the task at hand: making up a office-wide report to circulate, explaining what had happened. He then started a report of his own account for the file keepers, trying to wring as much detail out of his pounding skull as possible.

Stern was having similar issues. Intermittently a soft, frustrated breath left her. Jedikiah found himself unreasonably distracted by their sound. "Could you please stop that?" he asked coldly after a half-hour.

She glared up at him. "Excuse me, I'm minding my own business." There was a sharpness to her tone that he recognized as a drained feeling he had, too.

His countenance darkened. "Watch your tone with me, Miss Stern." The regression to honorifics elicited the desired reaction.

Stern glowered at him and stood, her chair hitting the wall with force. Jedikiah automatically did the same, hulking over his desk with a sneer. "Where are you going?"

"Taking the show on the road," she retorted with hostility over her retreating shoulder. "I don't have to put up with this."

"And Stern?" he projected his voice.

She stopped, half-turned stiffly.

"I thought you didn't make my coffee," he antagonized with a smug tilt of his head.

Stern hissed, clearly holding back some unprofessional expletives, growled explosively, and stalked off.

Jedikiah ground his teeth at her back, loathing the way he instantly watched her perfect ass. He all but flopped back into his chair, still angry. Clearly, they'd both been thrown for a loop by the psychic whiplash. It didn't excuse either of them, but at the same time, it did. Tensions were on the surface: in his case, the simmering sexual tension of having that fit and conservatively clad body up under him all day, every day.

His watch beeped noon. Shoving back his chair, Jedikiah stalked out of the office. As turned into the hall, a glint of silver on the floor caught his attention. It was Stern's cracked watch, dropped in her hasty exfiltration. He stuck it stormily in his pocket.

Somewhere in the cafeteria, there was meat he could sink his teeth into. Unlike that exposed collarbone...

The employees who noticed him avoided him. The ones that didn't ignored him. That was just fine with Jedikiah, who felt likely to roll some heads if he was irritated any further.

He went through the line and found a corner table unoccupied. Impaling the piece of chicken cordon blue made him feel better until he found phallic implications in the gesture. Then his brain did as it pleased.

Stephen's voice pulled him out of carnal reverie. "Hey, Uncle Jed!"

Jedikiah found his nephew staring at him pointedly, a tray in his hands. "You alright? I said your name, like, twice."

"Fine," the blonde man asserted as he latched onto the familiar annoyance. "Never better."

"I heard you got mind-whipped by an older breakout," Stephen said, plunking down the tray and taking a seat without asking. "How do you feel?"

Jedikiah gave a mirthless smile. "Super."

"Headache, right?" queried the youth, forking up his macaroni.

The man forced as much agreement into his affirmative grunt as his pride would allow.

"Those of us with powers recover faster from that sort of thing," Stephen said conversationally.

"Is that so?" Jedikiah asked blandly.

"It's worse at first, though," continued his nephew, eating with the gusto of a young man's metabolism. "I wasn't down there, but my trainer Allison said she hit the ground screaming. She got better in time to throw me around the gym."

Something clicked in Jedikiah's mind. Even at the furious peak of Alexa's psychic outpour of wrath, he'd been able to move freely enough to silence her. "Worse at first, huh?" he murmured. He pulled Stern's watch out of his pocket, examining the stopped hands. Turning it over, he saw a tiny square of nearly invisible silver duct tape on the back, where it lay against the wrist. Peeling it back revealed a tiny blue and red chip.

"What's that?" asked Stephen, who noticed his uncle's slight mania. "Looks like the guts of a dampener."

Jedikiah's plate blurred out of focus as the pieces fell into place. How Stern and he worked in such pronounced tandem, despite his slack hand. How she'd gotten so far, so fast in Ultra. How damnably, preternaturally efficient she was. How she knew he didn't like wasabi. How she always seemed to appear when he was needing her. How she predicted what he needed, laid it into his schedule without being told. How she knew to redirect his temper.

His coffee had been _perfect_...

Jedikiah's chest filled with cold, simmering fury. "Excuse me, Stephen," he said silkily. "I have something I need to attend to."


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: The porn starts here, people. Don't like, don't read. In all fairness, once it starts to get hanky, you could skip down to the last few lines and get the gist without quitting the story: I'm not gonna shove it down your throat. :)**

* * *

Jedikiah stalked down the empty halls with an imperious scowl befitting a man lied to for months. A red fury churned away in his gut, and he wondered peripherally if he would actually shoot someone if they appeared across his path.

Jedikiah had learned, over the course of his embittering life, to handle all kinds of betrayal, cosmic misfortune, anger, and despondency. He could smile at his enemies and plan their deaths by bullet or a thousand paper cuts. He could work alongside the race he so detested, and run his finger over the vials of power stripping serum to assuage his hatred. He could handle his conniving nephew, for some reason he still wasn't completely certain about (but definitely included words like 'necessary evil'). He could bend to the will of the Founder, but in his heart of hearts never bow.

The world and the people in it could shit on him all they wanted: he would take it, and eventually find a way to make them pay.

The one thing - the _singular thing_ - he did not abide by, from any family, friend, or stranger... was a lie.

Stern had _lied _to him. By omission, but nonetheless. He intended to make her pay.

As he rounded the corner to his office, a bizarre feeling skittered across Jedikiah's brain. It felt like a tickle to the actual organ in his skull: light and strange and a split between disconcerting and stimulating. Like a gentler version of what the Founder put him through periodically; less clinical than that of the telepathic agents under Jedikiah's command when they probed his mind for clues beyond his conscious memory.

The blonde man halted, shaking his head as he peered around. No one was there, in any room he'd passed so far on his warpath, or on either end of the hall. Even as he started onward again, it scrabbled at his mind once more, like a mouse's prickling, quick steps.

Jedikiah glanced up: the dampeners were clearly on, their signal lights evident. In order for any telepath to even be even remotely felt, Jedikiah had to be close.

Too close.

The Ultra man pulled his pistol from its nondescript place on his hip, senses broadening in search as he padded silently down the hall. He was suspicious of this psychic presence. The Ultra telepaths were all lunching, for one, and not nearly so blatant, for two.

Ergo, he assumed it wasn't any telepath under his command.

The closer Jedikiah got to his office, the stronger the sensation became. As he got two doors away, he had to stifle a gasp as a literal image burst across his mind's eye.

_A man's open collar, a button missing..._

Jedikiah shook his head fiercely, dislodging the imagery. Yet, there was a sensation associated with the image. The projector, whomever it was, sent a gentle feeling of warmth pooling in Jedikiah's gut.

The warmth didn't belong to Jedikiah: he could be certain as much. But the weird echo of someone else's physical status was eerie. It was a much more pleasant version of what Alexa had projected during interrogation not three hours ago.

Jedikiah moved even slower now, but he was scarcely two more steps when another, stronger image surged into his mind.

_A chin hooked over a shoulder from behind, a hand sliding hotly into a shirt from the hem, a feminine panting..._

Jedikiah suppressed an audible, "Whoa." Whoever this telepath was, they were getting freaky with someone else.

In. His. Office.

His ire returned and his eyes narrowed. Whoever it was, they were about to be rudely interrupted.

Another step, and only one door between Jedikiah and his own workspace. His grip on his pistol tightened as another sensory overload assaulted him.

True lust curled in his belly, unbidden, secondhand.

_A nip along a creamy thigh, a shudder, a woman's hoarse whisper of, "Please, don't tease me..."_

Jedikiah swallowed. Hard. His cock was starting to take an interest in the surplanted thoughts. With effort, he shoved down the foreign sensations, brought his pistol back up.

With every passing second, the inverse was looking more and more attractive.

He didn't even have time to take another step: another bout of alien feelings and images shoved their way to the forefront.

_"Beg me..." _

That voice was male, but it sounded terribly familiar.

_Fingers slicked by something, plunging into a tight, hot channel..._

Christ, Jedikiah had to _check_ his own fingers to make sure it wasn't real. His cock was already half-hard, and his neck tense with the effort of holding back. It wasn't him feeling this (if only his hammering heart would listen). It wasn't real (if only his throbbing cock would obey). His pistol wavered before him. Jedikiah had to end this, before things got seriously out of hand.

In two broad steps, he was standing in his office door, gun ready. There was no one there, but a slight movement on his couch made him jerk around.

Stern was laying across the plush leather furniture. Her eyes were closed, her body loose with repose. She was sleeping on her back, one arm behind her head and the other across her ribs. A faint furrow appeared on her brow, perfect pink lips parting slightly. Her characteristic heels were off, and even as Jedikiah watched, her toes slowly curled.

Jedikiah nearly fell to his knees as the strongest mental invasion yet swept across his mind like a torrent of heat.

_"Beg me, or I'll keep you on edge," Jedikiah said, raspy but intense with dark sincerity. _

_She arched her back with a whine, jaw clenched, prideful. "Make me," she ground out, legs twitching. Stern raised her head to pin him with a snarl of defiance. _

_Jedikiah slowed the pace of his fingers, barely brushed a thumb over her clit. She choked on a moan, hips twisting. "I can do this all day, Laura," he informed with sinister promise. "All. Day."_

Jedikiah came back to his own body, chest heaving, mind whirling as it fell into place. Stern was _dreaming._ About him. And her.

And what's more, she was projecting her dream. It only confirmed his suspicions. Jedikiah realized it had to be because her watch had broken: it must have enabled her to hide her species for so long. Now without her dampener to wear, and in the wake of the mental attack from Alexa's interrogation, Stern was psychically leaking like a faucet, all over his brain.

If it hadn't been him walking down this hall, undoubtedly someone else would have intercepted her dreams. Jedikiah was a fortunate man.

As he watched her quizzically over his gun sights, debating if he wanted to ruin his couch with her blood, it occurred to Jedikiah he'd wanted her increasingly since she first crossed his carpet. He'd eyed her from a professional distance as she won battle after battle, took his cruelty on the chin, fought back with her spunk and spite and unpretentiously beautiful body. It flummoxed him, how she thrived in such a harsh place like a plant poking through concrete.

All his prods and harassment towards her had been in test of that tenacious spirit.

Jedikiah flipped the safety back onto his gun, holstered it. He had a decision to make: enact his anger on Stern for her lie by railing against her, firing her, kicking her out on her pretty ass; pretend he wasn't hard and wanting because of her (yet again, he realized). He could make a call to the Founder and get permission to depower her, and he'd have the satisfaction of watching all that made her so damned excellent burn away from her chromosomes like witchfire.

Or Jedikiah could walk away, delay the flagellation, and find a quiet bathroom stall to take care of his pressing urge.

A devious grin flicked over Jedikiah's face. What kind of Ultra top dog would he be if he couldn't compromise the two endeavors?

A soft huff escaped Stern's lips as her hand slid just a hair's breadth lower to her waist, unconsciously spurred by the dream's sensations. An imageless stab of pure lust spiked Jedikiah's blood at the implication. Nope, that one was all him.

He made no sound as he crossed the floor, rounded the low table. Just as he crouched next to the sleeping woman, another flash of stolen dreams flitted into his mind.

_"Please," Stern whimpered, fighting his grip that kept her wrists pinned above her head on the desk. She finally raised her head to give him a wrecked expression, all bitten lips and tossed hair and desperation. She was coming apart under his onslaught, quickening to the motions of his fingers, tightening. "Please, Jedikiah, please pleasepleaseplease - "_

Jedikiah moaned before he could stop himself, low and guttural. She was seconds away from going off like a bomb...

Laura Stern's eyes fluttered open. Confusion colored them hazy, then frustration as the orgasm flickered in her body.

"Hello, Stern," Jedikiah greeted huskily. "Pleasant dreams?"

Her eyes widened in realization, then terror. As she opened her mouth, Jedikiah pounced.

He grasped both of her wrists, quickly pinned them at the level of her head. She cried out in surprise and fear, but Jedikiah thrust his face close to hers. "Not. One. Word," he hissed.

Stern fought his hold. The semblance to the dream of mere seconds ago was enough to send another flame of heat licking into her belly.

Jedikiah grinned like the devil. "I can _feel_ you, Stern," he whispered in her ear. "So close, aren't you?"

The woman made an angry sound as she gave up struggling against his tight grip. "Fuck you, Price!" she spat. ""Human Resources will be getting a lengthy sexual harassment report tomorrow, starring you!"

"Do Homo Superiors get HR?" he rejoined coolly.

"Let me go this instant!"

"I don't think I will," he replied with infuriating calm. "I want to hear you admit what you've hidden from me for all these months."

"Like hell," she growled, eyes blazing. Her skirt was too narrow to bring up a knee to hit him, and from the current angle both knees would be ineffective.

"Come now, Stern," he purred, the innuendo a torment to both of them. "There's nobody else around to hear you."

The room was quiet save for two sets of heavy breathing, the click of Stern's nervous swallow.

"I know one way to make you show your true colors," Jedikiah said, as conversational as he was during interrogations. He transferred her wrists to one hand, and used the free hand to grasp her chin securely, forcing her to look into his sharp eyes. "If I can feel you," he said. "Then you can feel me."

Jedikiah grabbed at the tail of his lust and _yanked_. It spiraled in his gut with heat like a supernova, boiling his blood. Stern's mouth thinned as she bit back some sound, pulling fruitlessly on her hands. With the addition of his touch, the psychic link was almost constant, fuzzing out only as much as a dish in a hailstorm. It was maddening, to feel his lust and try to stomp out her own. "No," she gritted out.

"No, what?" managed Jedikiah. He was compounding her flagging desire, without even touching her. That just made him ache more in his pants.

Stern thrashed her head, her face drawn between exquisite need and stubborn anger, refusing to answer.

Jedikiah redoubled his efforts, replaying some of the imagery she'd inadvertently graced him with. _Fingers sliding torturously..._

A whimper crossed her lips. "Stop it," she whispered. "Stop that."

"Then say it," urged Jedikiah. He had the boldness and burn to seize her ear in his teeth, biting none too gently.

The effect was immediate: a return thrice-over of the lust he'd shoved at her. Stern gasped and her hips bucked once, knees brushing Jedikiah's back with a threatless convulsion. She tensed off the couch as far as she could towards him, getting in his face to snarl with furious arousal, _"I'm a Homo Superior!"_

Jedikiah pressed her back down, his breath taken momentarily. Even in the middle of this twisted game he enacted on her mind and body, to see Laura Stern so passionate, so fiery, lit a blaze in Jedikiah's bitter and angry heart that rivaled that in his gut. He'd broken through.

"There," he said, releasing her chin. "Was that so hard?"

"You got what you want," she said, cheeks blazing, turning her head towards the sofa. "Let me go."

Jedikiah's mean streak rose. "I haven't gotten _nearly_ what I want from you, Stern."

Stern turned back to eye him warily, her gaze still heated with arousal and spitfire.

"I wonder," Jedikiah continued, his dark gaze wandering the strained buttons of her blouse, the outline of the demicup lingerie beneath. "What the Founder would do if he discovered what you are?"

Stern went pale as a ghost.

"Oh, so he doesn't know," Jedikiah smirked with mocking reproval.

"Nobody does," she said. All the tension had drained from her body, and left defeated laxness in its wake. "I wear the dampener so nobody..."

Jedikiah's recalcitrance grew in him, and he tightened his grip on her wrists painfully. He would not be dissuaded by her sudden deflation. "I have a proposition for you, Stern," he said, meeting the renewed fight in her gaze. "It might just save your life, because the one person who hates to be deceived more than me is the Founder."

She was clearly biting back expletives, fixing hateful eyes on him expectantly.

"In recompense for your lies, you will continue to work here, under me," he began. "And you will take whatever punishment I deem... _fitting_." He ran a single finger across the outline of one bra cup through her shirt, and watched her expression for comprehension.

Stern practically choked, her face a contortion of rage, and she sputtered, "And if I refuse?"

Jedikiah reached into his pocket, withdrew his cellphone, and held up a speed dial number. "One call, and you're powerless, dead, or both." He put the phone back in his pocket and grinned lewdly. "I think we both know that you aren't _entirely _opposed to the idea."

Stern looked up at the ceiling, a derisive snort leaving her perfect lips. "Blackmail," she said darkly. "Sex for safety. Does that about sum it up?"

"In essence," Jedikiah replied evenly, watching her with a cool blue gaze. "You're qualified to write the form for it."'

Despite all, the corner of her mouth tipped up for a blink before returning to utter solemnity. She stared into his eyes unflinchingly, daringly, with twin jasper fires. Those fires sought to burn him down to his true motives.

"My _intention,_" Jedikiah stated after a long moment. "Is to solicit various sexual favors from you, in exchange for keeping your secret. In addition..." he trailed off with a dangerous smile. Jedikiah fished around in his head for a moment for a particular thread of thought, and when he shoved it at her, she sucked a ragged breath.

It was one of his own, personal fantasies. He gave it reign when he was home alone in the evenings, pensive and reproachful that he couldn't leave thoughts of her at work.

_His stiff hand fell against her bare ass, the SMACK reverberating. _

_She yelped, flexing on his lap futilely, and the sound turned to a low moan of pain and pleasure mixed thornily. _

_More spanks rained, covering both ass cheeks, down the backs of her thighs. He took special delight in the soft underside of her bottom, spending more stinging attention on it than elsewhere, until she was screaming, head down, writhing across his legs wantonly. He painted her red from below kidneys to above knees._

_"You brought this on yourself," he said silkily, pausing to run a hand over his fevered work, relishing her hiss and buck. "You know what those fuck-me heels do to me..."_

"In addition," Jedikiah repeated as he broke the fantasy pitilessly, cleaving to the way she echoed the hiss from his sordid reverie. "I'm choosing to _punish _you for your lying, Stern. Until your temp term is up, or I feel you've paid the price."

"You mean, paid the Price," she sneered, turning the noun to pronoun distastefully.

Jedikiah actually chuckled at her quick-wittedness, even under the circumstances.

"I hate you," she growled, the flames of the Hell he was doomed to in her eyes. "I accept your terms, but I will never stop hating you."

Jedikiah smiled, wicked and unrepentant. "I do hope so."

"Let me up, already," she said haughtily. "My hands are asleep."

"So push me off," he challenged, eyes narrowing. "Come on, Homo _Superior, _show your stripes."

"You still haven't put two and two together, have you?" She was no longer tugging on his grip, though he'd maintained it to the point she'd most likely entertain bruises. There was a calculating look on her face that usually proved perilous to inadequately reviewed agents. When directed at Jedikiah, it only served to annoy: a pretense of commandeering that he sought to rob her of.

"Care to clue me in?" he snapped. Jedikiah's inner evolutionary biologist started to carve on a chalkboard, adding up the evidence.

"Why would I, a Homo Superior, need a dampener on my very person just to escape notice?" she asked rhetorically.

"To avoid other telepaths picking up on you," answered Jedikiah. He was missing something.

"Why?" she asked again, lips curling wickedly. "The dampeners render them inert within Ultra walls. Why do the in-house dampeners not work on me?"

Was Stern saying she was strong enough to broadcast naughty dreams over the office dampeners? "You're stronger than them," he concluded. Jedikiah's inner biologist was still scratching away at the chalkboard...

"And what might make me so?"

The pieces clicked into place. There was only one explanation for this happenstance. "That's why I'm not TK'd into a wall right now," Jedkiah said slowly. "Or why you've not teleported away. You can't do either." His disbelief caused him to lean into her face again, blue eyes slicing. "You can't do _either?!"_

"Nope," she replied, popping the 'p' infuriatingly. "Instead of getting a dose of each of the three T's," she whispered with gentle menace. "I got a triple dose of just... one."

It made complete sense, and his inner scientist reveled in the discovery. Deep, deep down, however, Jedikiah stymied a flicker of worry. What was he getting himself into with this little bargain?

"I may be at your mercy to save my own skin," she continued, the sultry promise of threat in her tone. "But I am in no way helpless. We will play this game of punishment as my clock runs out, but remember... if I'm strong enough without my dampener to _accidentally_ broadcast my dreams, imagine what I can do when I _want_ to hurt. What you put Alexa through down in interrogation will look like _a fucking cakewalk_ compared to what I can do."

Jedikiah met her eyes steadily, pulse throbbing with liquid need. "There's the Stern I know," he replied with delicate mockery. "I was wondering when she'd come back." This was going to be the challenge he'd always imagined, wished for in his very core. To dominate. To conquer. To break this living statue of a woman that haunted him. To sink his teeth into her.

This was going to be fun.

"Then I suppose," Jedikiah proclaimed, surreptitiously gathering his feet under him while leaning perilously close to Stern. "There's only one thing left to do."

She eyed him like a rattlesnake watching a cobra for a strike. "What's that?"

"Seal the deal," he smirked. And he struck.

Jerking her off the couch in one swift motion, he gathered her against his chest. Ignoring her low but indignant squawks, he bundled her towards his desk and made to push her down upon it.

_NO! _her mental voice speared through his brain like a butcher knife. "I will not be taken like a whore, Price!"

"So you acquiesce to being taken, then?" he jeered, loosing her long enough to shove her to the flat, gleaming surface.

She caught herself on her arms and looked back over her shoulder furiously. "You can't expect - "

"I can," he interrupted. "And I do." He crowded her from behind, hard in his pants and letting it be known. "Take your pick of pertinent options, Stern," he said, running an impatient, heavy hand down her back.

Stern was wide eyed, bewildered. She was still pulsing and needy from the near-orgasm of her dream, which both amazed and flustered her. It hadn't helped to have the object of said dream hold her down in humiliation and throw gasoline on her fires. But she recognized an opportunity for a creative solution when she saw one. Even as her mind betrayed her traitorous body to him, causing that maddening smile to grace his indolent lips, she plotted to turn his words against him.

When she bumped her ass to his stomach, there was only perfunctory sexuality to it. The motion did what she desired: it pushed him back far enough for her to hitch her skirt up and swing a knee onto the desk.

By the time he'd regained his balance, she was kneeled on the surface of his desk: perfect ass prominent, skirt hiked, and flexible hips on display.

Stern was no fool. She could understand the rules of the game, and read Jedikiah's lust-addled mind, besides. She knew what he wanted (his dominance, her submission), and designed to turn it against him.

This time, when she regarded him over her shoulder, it was with a sultry, animal heat that came from her very loins. With a quick dip into his mind, she saw what he saw and felt secondhand the effect it was having. His pants were uncomfortably tight, and his pulse pounded. But he was transfixed by the _power _of what she proposed in this position: the possibilities rattling through his brain like ticker tape.

Right where she wanted him.

Just to fuck with him, she ran her hands slowly down her own sides, down her thighs, and lethargically spread her knees until her hot core was practically flat to the desk. _Imagine being inside me, like this, _she murmured to his psyche. _How tight I would be. How I would grip you all over. Milk you soft and empty._

Jedikiah flinched behind her, cock twitching sharply. "Fuck, Stern," he growled vehemently.

Her mental presence was snatched away, and the conjurings along with it. "I'm not letting you inside me until I'm sure you're clean," she stated evenly, fully intending to throw him. Tossing her hair over one shoulder, she queried sweetly, "Will that be a problem?"

Her goad snapped the man out of his rooted state, and he closed the gap in a half-step. "I was going to say the same thing," he sneered, reaching around her front to roughly unbutton her blouse.

Stern swallowed at the brush of his fingers. "You must really hate me if you're willing to go to all this trouble." Her antagonism fell shorter than she'd have liked due to the shiver that ran through her.

Jedikiah finished his task and bared her nude-toned lace to his hungry gaze. "Don't flatter yourself," he snorted. He pushed the blouse down her shoulders, and the taut muscle over her collarbone begged for his teeth. He obliged, palming her cups roughly and reveling in her bitten-back noises. "I'm not letting you go until you come," he threatened. His other hand ran over her (firm, supple, _delicious_) ass, slipping under her skirt and between stretch-pinioned legs to find her panties.

The heat and moisture there nearly made him lose it on the spot.

Stern threw back her head almost violently at his touch, reaching back to grip a firm handful of his pants leg, as though she required something to ground her. He stroked her through the lace, teasing.

"I hope you can do it before the lunch crowd lets out," Jedikiah whispered.

Her gasp of outrage turned to a moan of pleasure as he plunged beneath the panties, impaling her on a thick, clever finger.

Stern's locked body belied her reluctance to give into his demands, and it beckoned his free hand to pinch her sides, pluck her nipples through the demicup. He mouthed along her tense neck, strumming at a corded tendon with amusement. It might disappoint him to keep all her clothes on, but it positively _killed_ her. This was asserting his status, pure and simple. He would remain clothed, and she would be exposed like a harlot to whomever ventured past the office door.

He knew, somehow, that half-clothed was more humiliating to her than being naked. As though she wasn't worth the effort.

After only a minute, Stern's evolutionary imperative began to usurp her will. She had been unwillingly clenching down on his vexatiously moving finger from the moment of entry, but now, her hips began to move in time to his penetrations: little unsatisfying nudges of her pelvis that hinted at growing desire.

Jedikiah focused on sucking a mark over her scapula, where her bra strap would irritate it, and without warning added a second digit.

Stern choked on a whine and started to move in earnest, mouth open with rasps of breath. Jedikiah found his free hand drawn to her bunching stomach, tracing the slight compartments of muscle there.

"Beg me," he commanded, hooking his chin over to watch her move from the front, to enjoy the cant of her hips in answer of his every thrust. "Beg me, or I'll keep you on edge."

Stern's back bowed with a strangled groan as Jedikiah, the _heartless bastard_, nailed the dark tenor of his dream self's order.

She was so _there, _so close! Dream and reality swirled potently in her brain, lit up her body, coiled her pleasure deep and thorny. Their minds were so tangent, and with every second overlapped incrementally more until their pleasures were indistinguishable. All she needed was a little more...

"I can do this all day, Laura," he promised sinisterly in her ear. "All. Day."

Stern climaxed like a nuclear bomb, white hot candy sweet pleasure imploding her, obliterating her. She tightened like a vice and roared like a lioness into Jedikiah's hand, which clapped over her mouth.

Jedikiah let her ride his hand, and her mental reverberations drove him to his own orgasm, untouched and fully clothed. If he wasn't so impressed at the occurrence, he would have been more upset.

By the time she resurfaced from the typhoon, he'd recovered himself and withdrawn his juice-sodden hand. Stepping back left her bereft, severed their psionic tangencies. Stern sagged as his heat left her back, panting, closing her blouse with lacking motivation. The sudden silence was deafening as he watched her pliant back, adjusting his disagreeable clothes.

The tone of the hour chimed over the building, signaling the end of lunch.

"No one will think twice about us taking the rest of the day, after what happened in interrogation" he said quietly, breaking the stillness. "Go home. I'm doing the same."

Stern seemed to reel herself back to earth, and slid off the desk with barely a grunt of overflexed pain. "Until I fix my dampener, I can't come in," she said, finishing the buttons and turning. Her cheeks were still rosy, her lips a deeper pink than before. "The telepaths will sense me, without it."

Jedikiah could sense it more clearly, now. Even with fading arousal tingeing the edges, the surges of her mind were practically elemental, washing over his inner skull with the flare of radiating sunspots. "How long will that take?"

"A day, maybe two at most." She wasn't looking at him, tucking in her shirttail with a poker face negated by an off voice.

"Here," Jedikiah took the broken watch from his pocket and handed it back to her. Something poked under his ribs when she carefully didn't touch him in the exchange.

"Telecommute," he permitted. He could hear the sounds of employees clomping up the stairs down the hall. "Get going."

Stern hastily gathered her mobile office, slipped into her heels by the couch. Her strides out of the office were quick with worry about being caught psychically naked, and slightly languid with post-orgasm wobble.

Jedikiah watched her go, wondering why he was so unhappy when he'd gotten what he wanted.


	6. Chapter 6

Jedikiah came in the next day feeling refreshed in body and mind from the rest, but the damnably empty desk of his conniving secretary continued to draw his eye. It pissed him off more with every passing minute, to the point where he flung down his pen and sauntered out to find suitably managerial distraction.

Watching a trainee named Hilary fling Stephen into the ceiling with TK was undeniably funny to Jedikiah, but he hid the humor under a guise of longsuffering disappointment. He gave the trainees a challenge in teamwork, and sat back to watch the backbiting show.

He puts some agents on the tail of a group of Tomorrow People who were breaking into highrise apartments to steal and terrorize, but his heart wasn't in it.

Swiveling his chair around to watch the city peaks gleam and traffic surge allowed him room to meditate. Jedikiah was pleased, in a sense. He had Laura Stern right where he wanted her: subjugated to his will, somewhat compliant, and spitting angry fit to raise his fires to unholy levels.

So why wasn't he reveling?

_Boo-doomp!_ chirped his interoffice IM. Jedikiah rolled his chair back to the desk, cracking his neck. It was probably requisition forms medical.

**_Are you there, Mr. Price?_ **

Jedikiah wasn't positive who this might be. The tag said Reprimand. Jedikiah frowned in consternation, and at the overt, nerdy code-name-esque nature of the tag. His own was a much more demure UltraJPrice.

**Sam,** Jedikiah typed, referring to the southern IT guy. **Is that you?** The backwoods geek had taken it upon himself to chat Jedikiah up every time he saw the blonde man, with a familiarity that unnerved Jedikiah.

_**Do you mean Samuel, from IT? No, I'm not him. It's ME, Price.**_

Jedikiah pinched the bridge of his nose and loosed a heartfelt sigh. Stern. Of course. Stern Reprimand. **To assure me, tell me where our last encounter was.**

He could practically feel her seething. _**On the fucking desk, you asshole. And before that, if you were counting, on the couch.**_

**Language!** he patronized.

_**As I've said before, fuck you, Price.**_

**Why the furtivity, Reprimand?** he typed with a chortle.

_**I'm hacked onto the interoffice IM, that's why. I shouldn't be on here if I'm outside the building.**_

**Why have you spun your IM tag into a deviant BDSM pseudonym?**

A pause of about ten seconds._** Maybe I'm into that sort of thing. You would never know**._

It was Jedikiah's turn to pause. **Are you?**

A longer pause, about thirty seconds. _**Sorry, I had to finish oiling my flogger. I named it the Attitude Adjuster. Would you care to meet it?**_

**It would prove who the real deviant is,** he replied, emboldened.

_**I'm not the one fantasizing about spanking me.**_

Point one for the Homo Superior. **What's this about, Reprimand?**

_**I've typed up a contract outlining some basic aspects of this fuckery we call an arrangement. And I swear to God, if I hear one comment about Fifty Shades of Grey, I will make you bleed from the ears.**_

**Smutty novels are more your forte` than mine,** he replied snidely. They were both committed to this arrangement: he for the power trip, she for her secret's sake. The sex was the vehicle and a bonus, in Jedikiah's opinion. The contract was only smart, for both of them. Jedikiah liked the whole idea. It kept him on the razor's edge of consent (which meant more work, but more payoff in twisting her reluctance into screaming pleasure). It would provide a framework for, as Stern called it, the arrangement, and enable them both to mind boundaries. It might be a stretch to call it legally binding, seeing as it was blackmail of a paranormal being by the head of a quasi-paragovernmental organization, but for their own morals and ethics, it would prove useful.

Well, if one could call the scraps of humanity Jedikiah possessed as morals and ethics. Again, that was more Stern's forte`.

_**Again, you would never know if they were.**_

Jedikiah's eyes flickered over her words with a sense of resigned assent. Stern was completely right. He would never know the first thing about her unless she chose to reveal it, species notwithstanding. He'd had to sexually back her against a wall to get even that most basic information. The real question was if it would work again...

**Don't send it here...**

_**Wasn't planning to.**_

**...Where can we meet to go over it?**

_**Don't say a location over this IM. Who knows what might fall into the wrong hands.**_

**You could just *contact* me.**

A few seconds passed before she replied. _**Let me think of a place first.**_

There was a long pause. Jedikiah waited with baited breath, wondering how far away she was, if she retained psychic strength with that distance, if within that distance she could still breach the walls of Ultra. Variables rolled around in his head. The tickle across his brain made him jump slightly, and he held onto it like an outstretched hand. It clasped him back.

He could feel Stern, like a hawk high above, searing through the sky towards him. Stern fell across space to land in his mind, folding her wings, talons sinking into but not harming their human perch. Her sharp eye peered at him with the neutrality of nature, the passively violent instinct of evolution.

_Hello. It's just me._

"Who else would it be?" Jedikiah said aloud, a slight smile tipping his mouth.

He could feel her fight her own grin, preening at the feat she knew was remarkable. _I have need of something from you._

"What might that be?" he drawled, plumbing the innuendo for all it was worth. "Another desk session?"

Stern derisively snorted through their link, pointedly ignoring him save for a sensation of a flush of embarrassed pink. _My dampener watch can't be repaired until I replace some parts. I need you to bring me a dampener device so I can butcher it._

Jedikiah was already thinking through the minor form he'd have to fill out, and where the dampeners were stored in the building. "Consider it done. Where would you have us meet?"

He could sense her chewing her inner cheek in consternation. _See, that's the thing. I live out in the country, away from people who might feel my psychic presence's escaping rays. As you've witnessed, without my watch I'm exposed to my power's outbursts, particularly when I sleep._

Jedikiah could definitely, explicitly remember. A few snapshot memories skittered across his mind's eye (fingers-gasps-wetness), but he shoved them down in favor of the conversation. He could always revisit them when his mind was his own again.

_That said, I can't leave my home until I have my watch back. So you'll have to come to me._ If Stern were before him, she'd undoubtedly be wearing a distasteful wrinkle in her nose. She managed to pass the general idea along cohesively.

Jedikiah mulled it over, acutely aware of the telepath passively watching his thoughts like a tablet screen. He didn't mind the idea of seeing Stern again, much less in her vulnerable state. And he'd be able to sink his claws into her again, much to their mutual enjoyment.

_Don't bet on it,_ Stern retorted blandly, but he got the fleeting impression she'd crossed her legs a little tighter.

"When and where?" Jedikiah replied. In response he received a mental fast-motion route summary, presumably of her drive home, which focused on the street signs that would guide his way. Jedikiah made easy note of each one, surprised to find he'd driven past the house a few times this year.

It was about twenty miles away. Twenty miles! Ultra's best telepaths couldn't cross that distance without the aid of a spinal port!

_Clearly, whenever you can make it out would be fine. But keep in mind, I can't return to work until I fix my watch. And also, I will eventually run out of food. _A 1/16th second flash of a bar of chocolate flitted through their bond, but she reeled back on the bleed-over craving.

"Trust me," Jedikiah smirked into his empty office. "I want you back here. It's simply no fun without you."

Her swallow was brought on by a sudden, buzzing, carnal heat tempered with trepidation, and was so palpable through the mental link, Jedikiah felt the urge to imitate it. _I'll see you this evening, then._

The withdrawal of her mind from his left him with the feeling of having been psionically stretched, then shrinking back down to normal size. Jedikiah steepled his fingers for a long minute, collecting his thoughts. His inner scientist exulted in the new data from the clearly unique being under his thumb.

He would have to twist Stern's arm into letting him test her capacity in more ways than just one, apparently. Who knew how an intimate understanding of her special power might benefit Ultra?

In addition to the form for the spare dampeners (he'd bring a few, better safe than sorry), he also requisitioned a full lab kit and a few specialized tools from the research lab. With any luck, he'd have Stern exploitably bent over a barrel, figuratively and literally, in less than six hours.

* * *

"Excuse me, Doctor Price, sir?" a sycophantic voice a the clack of low heels brought Jedikiah out of his tablet, but didn't slow his walk down an Ultra hall. He spared a look over his shoulder to match the voice to Hilary, the barely-woman who had been nagging him about Stephen. Jedikiah had to admit the blonde trainee may have brought to mind a yapping chihuahua, but she acted like a champion fighting pitbull: when she set her teeth in something, it was all over.

This time, however, the Ultra man found it annoying. Jedikiah was having trouble tracking down a mobile EEG, which would enable him to measure Stern's brain activity (once he blackmailed her into submission, anyway). He allowed the blonde to trot after him, and did not give a reply.

"I just wanted to follow up with you about your nephew's human confidant, Miss Finch?" continued Hilary, having some trouble keeping up with Jedikiah's long stride.

"Yes, I have the situation under control," Jedikiah replied absently, sending the final search request to the medical ward.

"And Stephen will be reprimanded the same as everyone else, right?" Hilary continued pointedly. The hate-on she carried for Stephen was starting to make Jedikiah grind his teeth.

In addition, she used the word 'reprimand', which now had decidedly more salacious connotations in Jedikiah's mind. He wouldn't have that ruined by the word leaving unworthy lips.

"I don't answer to you, Miss Cole," Jedikiah reminded in a way that usually shut people down. Oh, but she was such a good little mole; such a dedicated soldier to the cause. Jedikiah couldn't smother her fires. Swiping the tablet closed, he continued, "And your strong work ethic is to be commended."

Hilary gave a knowing beam, acknowledging her own excellence.

Jedikiah fixed stone cold blue eyes on the girl. "But internal sabotage based on ruthless ambition and personal vendetta will not be tolerated."

"Yes, but - the girl, you're going to kill her?" pushed the trainee.

Jedikiah was reaching the end of his patience for this chihuahua's yapping. "If I say 'yes' and you smile, you're next," he threatened. He paused to let Hilary school her face to neutrality. "Yes. But I want you to understand something. You and everyone like you have the privilege of working at this agency for the exclusive benefit of human beings. And when one of them has to be sacrificed for the greater good it is not a cause for celebration or personal achievement, _ya got it_?" Jedikiah growled.

The full weight of his flinty tone fell on her still-tender shoulders, and Hilary replied in a subdued tone, "Yes, sir."

Jedikiah turned away, holding her gaze forcefully until the last second. Even a pitbull stood no chance against a lion, king of his world. "Nice talk."

A few turns in the large building later, his tablet indicated a message from medical: they were in possession of the mobile EEG. Jedikiah swiftly descended upon the ward and snatched up the device. Once the narrow briefcase was under his arm, he felt considerably less annoyed. As the time for his departure drew nearer, he grew more excited.

Sex, science, and Stern, all rolled into one. Jedikiah had no doubt he'd be getting all three. His evening was looking brighter by the second.

* * *

"Well, fuck," Jedikiah bit out, peering through the blanket of water that fell onto his windshield. For a clear substance, the rain was rather impenetrable by the human eye. Thunder sounded loudly in the heavens, literally rattling Jedikiah's leg against the car door like radio bass.

It had been raining discernible droplets when he got out of the office, and had gotten progressively worse as he drove. Now, he fairly inched his way down the road, leaving the city behind in favor of suburbs and strip malls.

At least there were no other cars around. Everyone else had the sense to stay indoors.

For the third time, the radio informed Jedikiah of the potential of severe thunderstorms, hail, and the tornado touchdown three counties over. He stabbed the button to silence the monotone voice, gripped the wheel tighter, and rolled on.

Soon his perseverance paid off. The strip malls and look-alike houses gave way to woods, fields, and the occasional older-model house that stood from the hands of two or more generations' care. The trees whipped the sky into a frenzy, and a few times Jedikiah had to inch around fallen limbs.

_Are you alright? _asked Stern, suddenly breaking his concentration and filling his head like an explosion.

Jedikiah jumped, but righted the vehicle. "A little warning, Stern!" he barked.

The Homo Superior read the situation as it presented itself through his eyes, and said, _I apologize. Is it too dangerous for you to be out in this storm?_

Jedikiah _psshed_ in offhanded negative. "More tedious than anything. Besides, I'm closer to coming than going." He boldly grinned, lightning flashing in agreement. "So to speak."

_You are such a dog, _Stern replied, giving the impression of shaking her head. _Would you like a little help seeing?_

They fell back into their problem-solving roles with ease, for all the world acting like they were ironing out the kinks in a presentation. "What do you suggest?" Jedikiah asked.

He felt Stern push and rummage a little then, inside his skull. Like she'd placed a firm fingertip upon a specific portion of his brain. _If I may..._

With a momentarily sickening tilt and surge, the world as Jedikiah saw it gave way. He blinked. Rubbed his eyes, blinked harder. "My, my, Miss Stern," he said, impressed. "You've been holding out on me."

The rain still fell, but to Jedikiah's Stern-warped reality, it didn't obscure his car's windshield. In fact, outside the car was bright as day. The droplets still plummeted from a robin's egg blue sky like a bizarre meteorological event, but they made no discernible impact on the ground, car, or trees.

Jedikiah was forcibly reminded of just how powerful the single-T Homo Superior was. He resolved to learn as much as he could about her, and her unique genetic code.

_You're seeing what I usually see on my drive home, _Stern explained absently, unaware of his musings as she 'fiddled with the dials'. _It's very real. You can... _She trailed off.

Jedikiah stepped on the accelerator and prompted, "I can what?"

_I was going to say, 'You can trust me,' but in all honesty, I don't think you would. _

Jedikiah's brow knitted, and he was distracted from the strange controversy of weather by the implications of her words. "I can trust you," he corrected, the shriveled thing in his ribcage agreeing with a squeeze. Despite her being of a different species that he viewed as malignant, and despite the nefarious hold he had over her, Jedikiah had spent the better part of four months working alongside Laura Stern. He wasn't sure exactly when it happened, but he'd placed some trust in the secretary. He cleared his throat and revised, "I'm carrying something you need. You have every reason to ensure my safe arrival."

Were she riding beside him, she might have hummed passively, as though she only partly agreed with him. Nonetheless, the sentiment was silently communicated through their bond.

"Besides," Jedikiah continued, a cat-like grin sliding into place. "I can't make you climax multiple times from a car."

The daytime rain imagery faltered for a few seconds like a skipping record. Her mental splutter and the carry-over of her physical choke on some drink was enough to make Jedikiah chuckle. _Come again?! _she managed.

"You will," he replied serenely. "And again, and again, and again..."

_Fuck you, Price! _Stern replied hotly, her emotions of mild arousal and fury at war. The idea had enough merit that she was trying desperately to hide it.

That brought a genuine laugh to Jedikiah's lips. "It's conditional, of course."

Wariness was clear. _How so? _

"I want to do a few tests on your powers," Jedikiah explained carefully. "You're incredibly unique, Stern. Understanding you might be useful to Ultra, to the human race."

Intrigue bled through the link, and a smattering of more arousal, but it was clear she was hiding a lot of her thoughts on the matter. It felt like he was looking through a keyhole into the room of her vast mind, and only seeing enough of the workings to whet his appetite.

"Medical kink much, Stern?" teased Jedikiah, shifting in his seat as his own body responded to her sexual echo.

It might have been hard to mentally grumble under one's breath, but the secretary managed. _And the STD panel I asked for?_

"I can run it for both of us while you watch. I imagine that would make you feel better, to see it happen?" He'd thought it through, and decided demonstrating credibility and agreeability for Stern's (reasonable) demands was conducive to their arrangement. It could only work in his favor.

The blackmailing was inescapable. Being an asshole, less so.

There was a blank pause through which no emotion escaped, like a firewall between condominiums. Jedikiah could sense her, but he couldn't _feel _her, and found that he really wanted to, at that moment. Finally, she spoke, _It seems I'm not the only trustworthy one in this arrangement. _

He smiled. "I'll see you soon, Stern."


	7. Chapter 7

The rain stopped amid a sickly yellow-green sky that promised a resurgence. Jedikiah hefted the bag and briefcase from his trunk and bolted for the front door of the inconspicuous brick ranch house. It was just as old as the ones he had passed en route, but Stern's house had a few modern touches: the font of the house numbers was Courier New; the shutters were the same trendy teal as the Prius parked under the carport; the landscaping was well cared for.

A sharp gush of wind blew wet leaves from the spreading, sheltering oak into his face, and it gave him a grunting pause as he wristed his eyes clean. He heard rather than saw the internal door open, and the glass outer door settle into its frame at the suction. As his vision cleared, his mind clouded.

Stern in casual wear was a conundrum of epic proportions. The image of her in sorority sweatpants, a Plain White Tees hoodie, and tastefully mismatched socks was such a clash with what he usually saw, and what his mental stock of her was, that he found himself momentarily mute. Stern sans makeup wasn't much different, all deep pink lips and long lashes working to make him swallow a tad harder.

Still, was this even the same woman?

From the other side of the glass storm door, the secretary cocked her ponytailed head. "Come in, dumbass. Storm's about to start up again."

Jedikiah smirked. Yep, same woman. She stepped back as he shifted his load to open the door. As it swung wide, the scent of cinnamon and baking assaulted him. "Did you make cookies for me?" mocked the blonde, setting down the briefcase to bolt the door behind him.

He was expecting a sneer and a retort punctuated by their mental equivalent. Instead Stern remained unflapped, driving home her boss's suspicion that she was white-knuckling her mind's radiating pulses after their little car conversation. In addition, they weren't making steady eye (and skin) contact, so all emotional factors remaining constant, the connection would be shallow at best. "When I'm anxious, I bake. 'S a bad habit." She glanced down his body, much to Jedikiah's interest, but pointedly stared at his shoes. "Off, please."

Jedikiah was reminded by the simple authority in her voice that this was her abode. It was so different from the hardwon power of her workplace persona. Here, she was queen.

Didn't mean he wouldn't test his boundaries, see what made her snippy. It was a favorite pastime, after all.

He felt momentarily guilty for the jeer that had fallen flat, so he toed off the black dress shoes without argument. "'Bad habit?' That's yet to be seen." Ambling down the short entry hall, he followed his nose through the living room with its arrangement of comfortably worn, moderately expensive furniture and white-on-green tones palette. The kitchen opened up in a wonder of stainless steel, reddish woods, and granite that, were he one to care, he would appreciate.

"Roll up a sleeve, Stern, and we'll get started," Jedikiah said, dropping the bag and case on the table and continuing to the stovetop, where two trays of cookies sat on wire racks.

His _au natural _employee eyed the load warily. "What's in the case?"

"I told you about the testing," Jedikiah reminded, snagging a spatula from the jar of implements. "I'd like to get a baseline for your powers. This will show me the levels of brain activity you enact when you stretch your mind, so to speak."

She leaned a hip against the doorframe between rooms, arms crossed loosely as she watched him take a cookie from the tray. "You seem excited about that," she commented blandly. "I thought Homo Superiors were a threat to Homo Sapiens, in your eyes."

Jedikiah paused in midchew. Inadvertently, Stern had put her finger on what had been nagging him for two days: how single-T paranormals challenged his viewpoint of Darwinism in action. Was someone like Stern acceptable, even reconcilable to the human race? How did she and potentially others fit into the scheme of the species on the planet, as Jedikiah (an absolute authority on the matter) saw it?

Could they do what their sister triple-T race couldn't: take lives?

The tests would help him figure that out. Seeing the teeth and claws of this variant on a theme would be the first step towards reaching a verdict.

"These are remarkably edible," he sidestepped her question. Soft, chewy, and high-grade cinnamon. The raisins tasted rum-soaked. Certainly not from a plastic package.

"Gee, thanks," Stern replied, but without significant sarcasm. Outside, the rain picked up with a growing sigh, whooshing against the windowpanes as though flung. "I'm sorry, you said to roll up a sleeve...?"

"Yep," Jedikiah said. "I'm taking blood to run the STD panel and a few other tests on." He looked over at her teasingly. "Don't tell me you're afraid of needles."

"No!" she said, voice pitching an octave in indication of otherwise.

The Ultra man finished the cookie and went to wash his hands at the sink with absurdly sweet-smelling soap. "Good. The sooner we get that handled, the sooner the real fun can start."

Stern snorted balefully. "If you call sexual coercion fun, sure."

Jedikiah faced her, a handy towel at use and a wolfish grin in place. "You don't?"

A faint blush rose to her cheeks and she dropped his gaze. "I'm not sure what to call it."

That concerned him, on some obscure level. Jedikiah was under the impression that sexual blackmailers did not bother themselves with the emotional compliance of their victims, so much as they did their physical willingness. But this was not an ordinary blackmailing, and both Jedikiah and Stern knew it. He had secretly desired Stern almost as soon as she'd stepped foot in the office, and built their relationship around the clear repression of that desire. It was the fact he could sense the same in Stern, in her antagonism and lack of contrition, that skewed the color of the arrangement into something decidedly... complicated.

Putting aside the towel, Jedikiah measured the space in paced steps and captured Stern's chin, forcing her to look at him with those snapping eyes. He noticed for the very first time that they were green, like the pine boughs that bent in the gale outside. "Well," he breathed, inches from her lips. "We'll have to work on that."

Their proximity reminded each, in varyingly poignant ways, that they had yet to kiss. But then, that was what lovers did. And they were far from lovers.

He gave her time to respond with a dilation of the pupils, an infinitesimal drift towards him, before pulling away and walking to the table. "Best use of our time," he began, removing the instruments for blood sampling out of his bag of tricks. "Will be to let the panel render while you work on your watch."

A twitter of her irritation crossed his own mind, and he grinned to himself as she replied with forced nonchalance, "You brought the dampeners?"

Jedikiah pulled three of the disks out of his bag. "These were spares for the ceiling mounted ones in Ultra's building, so they're useless without a power source." He gave a flicker of a smile. "Not that they'd work without actually touching you, anyway."

"The watch runs off a battery, which fuels the dampener," Stern explained, taking the disks and examining them. "These will do nicely. And thank you for getting spares."

Really, they were on 'thank you' terms? Was it just Jedikiah, or were they on relaxed status outside the stark grey building they called second home? If he didn't know better, he'd venture to call their interaction amicable. And that just wouldn't do. To have his blackmailee agreeable in anything but the most basic, morally applicable way for the carnal nature of their arrangement would hint at _feelings_ Jedikiah was methodically tearing down, even as they reared up repeatedly like the undead hordes of fiction. "I don't want a repeat of this," he replied shortly, letting it sting with blame. "Make a backup repressor so your secret won't interfere with your job again."

Stern stiffened slightly, and when she spoke, it was almost the same tone as she used at work. "It won't happen again."

Jedikiah busied himself with setting up a tray of vials and needles stripped of their wrappings, while his secretary busied herself with her sleeve. Stern pulled out a chair in his line of sight, and Jedikiah had to swallow his surprised expression as he sat to face her. She had removed the hoodie due to the restrictiveness of the sleeves, leaving her in a tight black camisole that made his pulse pick up.

"Just how many tubes are you gonna take?" she asked, the same worried-and-hiding-it highness in her tone. She visibly flinched when Jedikiah began to tie off the rubber strap to her upper arm.

"One for syphilis, one for HIV - " Jedikiah began to rattle off.

"A _number,_ Price."

"About _eight,_ Stern," he replied, mimicking her inflection.

The paranormal secretary's wide eyes flitted to his, and her brainwaves skittered across his forehead before being forcibly reeled back. Just as forcibly, she took a deep breath and fisted her hand. The clench was more to steady they shaking, Jedikiah noticed.

The blonde man pulled on disposable gloves, eyeing the internally warring woman. "You alright there, Stern?" he half-taunted, half-asked.

At the snap of the gloves, she'd gone a shade paler. "Dandy, never better," she rejoined.

_Who'd have thought the mighty Homo Superior would be scared of needles? _he thought, huffing quietly.

"Heard that," Stern ground out. "I'm not scared."

"Right," Jedikiah said sarcastically. "So the fact you're reading my mind on accident means...?"

"Just take the damn blood," she snapped, jaw ticking.

Jedikiah picked up the plastic housing with the needle that would let him insert tube after tube without pause, considering his frightened secretary. "I'll have to do the same thing, you know," he said by way of half-assed comfort.

She shook her head, ponytail bobbing. "Not helping, Price."

With her head ducked, breath rapid, and fingers folded against trembling, it was the second most raw emotion Jedikiah had seen in his employee, after her lusty hatred on the office sofa. His brow furrowed in consternation as it occurred to him he didn't want to truly _scare _her, not when she was so vulnerable. He had better, more enjoyable ways to mess with Laura Stern than fear.

At the thought of those 'ways' an idea came to him, and he placed the needle back on the tray with a clatter. "Come 'ere," he sighed, seizing Stern firmly by the wrists and pulling her towards him.

"What - ! Hey!" she said sharply as Jedikiah maneuvered her to sit in his lap.

"Quiet," he interrupted lazily, cementing her back to his chest with a forearm around her waist. After a moment of gripping his arm and arranging her legs to avoid falling, Stern realized that her reaction would determine the climate of the following scheme. Pointedly, she loosened her grasp and the tension in her spine, pouting because she had no reasonable recourse.

"Good girl," he murmured against her nearly bare shoulder. A rumble of thunder matched his timbre.

Stern's breath hitched once, then again as he pressed his lips to her scapula, to the mark he had left there in their first encounter. He was pleased to see her bra strap had kept it red and prominent longer than normal, and set about renewing it with shielded teeth while his free hand sought the dip below her left breast.

_"Jedi-... _Price_,"_ she corrected as he traced the sensitive underside of her breast through the camisole. _Dammit dammit dammit, _sailed through Jedikiah's frontal lobe as her panic caused her to cross boundaries.

Moving to the patch of skin under her ear, Jedikiah said between nips, "Seeing as you've foregone 'sir', call me what you like." To punctuate, he scraped his teeth across the tendon. "I want to hear my name from your pretty mouth."

Stern gasped and her stomach contracted under his arm as he _bit_ her ear unapologetically, worrying it slightly. "Jed- !"

Grinning, the man kissed the scrape in reward, licked the bite. "Close enough."

She squirmed as he continued his assault: cupping and squeezing her breast, pinching and pulling the nipple through the fabric before repeating the same attacks on the other. He was getting hard, but trying not to let his excitement get away from him without guarantee of relief. There was science to be performed, and that did not involve an erection. Still, keeping Stern off-balance would only aid his agenda, so he choked his arm up under her breasts in preparation. When he flattened his palm against her taut stomach, fingers down, and started a slow, sensuous _slide_ towards her pubis, she tightened her hold on his pants leg. "Wait, wait, please," she whispered, canting her hips away.

Jedikiah surprised himself by listening, pausing over her navel. "What?"

"We have things to do," she said, reminding Jedikiah he was still gloved and awaiting her blood. Stern shifted her shoulders then, arranging her torso so she could place her eyes against his neck without significant strain. She graced the spot with her wet lips before doing so; the tremulous and unprecedented move drawing a throb from the cock and a groan from the throat Jedikiah. Her non-tourniquetted arm raised to slide through his hair awkwardly, but no less intentionally. "May I...?"

Jedikiah felt her mind fully brush his for the first time since she'd fled the office, and his own psyche seemed to instinctively make room for it inside his skull. "Come in," he responded, curious as to her purpose.

The woman flooded his brain like the rain pouring through the gutters outside, occupying fully whatever space given like so much water. Her presence felt like a stream moving among the craigs of his consciousness, soaking in his arousal, the occupation of his pleasured thoughts and his hands as they tingled for her skin. She seemed to settle there: a dammed creek. "Go ahead, do it," she murmured, occupied.

Jedikiah barely moved to pick up the needle again. Reflecting on the fortune of his skill with the usually awkwardly arranged and squirming recipients of his needles, he single-handedly placed the raised, powder blue vein and began to draw. Her mental touch did not distract him any more than her fingers laced in his hair.

Moving to replace the full vial with an empty one didn't cause Stern to change pose, or change focus. She seemed content to explore the shores of her stream in his head, lightly and (remarkably, arguably) unobtrusively investigating whatever she touched. She found his college years and spent a few minutes there, amusedly absorbing younger Jedikiah's hair and taste in music.

By the fourth vial Stern had moved on to a handful of harmless memories of Stephen's father and Jedikiah's brother, Jack Jameson. She considered the similarities between the dead man and each of his relatives that she knew, contemplating recessed blonde genes.

"I got our mother's hair," Jedikiah said, taking the fifth vial studiously. "Stephen could have been blonde, too, but he got his mother's dominant hair color."

She gave a single hum of understanding before saying contemplatively, _Jack. Y__ou miss him._

Jedikiah was given pause on how to respond, watching the ruby liquid spill into the plastic tube. He settled for the truth. "Yes, I do." It took a great deal of care to avoid mentally touching on any facets of his plan connected to Jack, or Stephen. Stern need not know, and need not be endangered.

_Endangered, sure,_ he mentally scoffed._ Or get in my way._

_Well excuse me, _Stern muttered, moving on.

Jedikiah could tell she didn't begrudge him his secrets for the simple reason that she had her own to jealously guard. If he wanted, the short highway between their minds could be traversed into Stern's skull, too. And if Jedikiah didn't have needles stuck into her arm, he might have investigated the edges of her mind, like waves investigate the beach.

_Maybe, _the paranormal ventured, affecting a smirk without using her mouth. _If you play nice enough. _

Jedikiah smiled as he balanced the filling sixth tube with his right hand, and reached down to cup her sex with his left. The record-skipping sensation was even more hilarious when it occurred in his own head, free to witness. _Hey! Quit it! _Stern yelped, canting her hips yet again.

Jedikiah rubbed her shamelessly through her yoga pants, canvassing her womanhood with four rhythmic fingers. "But, if we're keeping track of things that are remarkably _edible..._"

Again, the record skipped, though this time nearly hard enough to slip off the player. Stern's actual mouth fell open at what Jedikiah implied, mind utterly blanking for a full three seconds while he looked on wolfishly. _You cannot be serious, _she all but babbled, whirlpools appearing in her quiet stream.

"I don't generally play nice," he replied. With a light smack to her pussy that made her physically and psychically jump, he exchanged the sixth vial for the seventh.

Stern was aroused and angry, now. Just the way he liked her. _Where do you get off, Price? _she snarled, vehemence echoing in his skull like thunder. _What the hell do you like so damn much about...! _She trailed off, foregoing the question in favor of seeking the answer herself.

She broke the dam of her streams, pouring through his mind again in a reckless freefall that made Jedikiah grimace, trying to grasp at her watery trail. "You are _not _allowed to - "

_To what? _she challenged, evading him skillfully. _You let me in. I want answers. _

"Then ask ME and I'll tell you!" Jedikiah gnarled, trying to stem the tide with a broom.

Stern seemed to startle back to herself at his tone, stopping her careen though his mind. She surged backwards, withdrawing and receding like floodwaters in fast-motion. Jedikiah felt her lashes tickle his neck as she opened her eyes again. Dropping her hand from his hair, her breath fanned over his collarbones as she asked with sheepish regret and apology all rolled into one, "You done yet?"

"Almost," Jedikiah grunted, placing the final vial into the housing. His neck was tense as a bowstring. Having a paranormal pour through your every mental defense like water through sand was disconcerting, frightening even. Certainly not a comfort to Jedikiah, or an assurance as to Stern's species' trustworthiness.

But then, their trust was superficial, at best. The type of trust placed in two sentient beings of different species to not bite out jugulars during coerced sex.

She sighed as the silence wore on, pausing a full minute before saying softly, "I am sorry. I got out of hand. I won't ever do it again."

Jedikiah clenched his jaw once, warring with his grudging nature and his untoward agenda. He had to respect her guts at apologizing immediately. He could feel her regret like a dull ache, but wasn't sure he wanted to assuage it (or even how). "You want to know why," he said simply.

Stern's words breezed intimately through his collar. "Why you chose this particular method of blackmail. Yes."

Jedikiah plucked the needle carefully out of her vein, pressing a gauze patch into the crook and untying the tourniquette. Truthfully, he wasn't sure _why,_ only that having her settled something inside him he hadn't known was awry. But why did it have to be Laura Stern? "I don't know, Stern," he said with exasperation. "Maybe you're the finest ass I've seen in years, and I took the opportunity when it was presented."

Even when being mysogynistically objectified, Stern could read between Jedikiah's lines. She laughed like the gale beyond the windows as he pressed her arm into bending, trapping the gauze as she raised her head. "Only you," she chuckled. "Only you would square off with a powerful telepath for sex."

Wanting to distance himself, Jedikiah sniffed. "Well, the sex part is dependent on these test results. I have my reservations."

Stern extricated herself from his lap with all the grace of fluid, unperturbed by his insult. "I'm only obliging because fair's fair," she said sweetly. "I'm clean as a whistle. How about you?"

Jedikiah's eyes narrowed. He stripped off his gloves in such a way that the outsides were reverted internally, and unbuttoned his shirt front. "You'll soon see, Stern," he promised darkly. "And then I will make you regret your smart-ass comments."

"How so?" she queried mockingly. There was veiled interest in her eyes as she watched him strip out of his dress shirt, revealing the undershirt that clung to his gym-grown and assault-tested muscle.

Jedikiah smiled brightly as he brought the tourniquette to bear on his own arm, deftly tying it off with his teeth and one hand like a drug addict. "You've already revealed your medical kink."

"You have exactly zero evidence of that," she replied with a contrived frostiness.

Bringing a fresh needle to bear on his own arm, Jedikiah's smile honeyed. "Remember those tests you agreed to?"

Stern's coolness dissipated somewhat into a flutter of nerves that felt like a moth hitting Jedikiah's forehead.

"I rest my case," the Ultra man said, exchanging the vial.

"I'll be damned if you get anymore cookies," she muttered venomously under her breath.


End file.
